Let me see if I understood D´Souza´s reasoning:

Unfortunate indians catched fatal diseases from uninvited foreign…I mean, adventurous europeans.

Unfortunate indians die like flies.

Uninvited foreign…I mean, adventurous europeans, and their sons and grandsons, take the “deserted” land.

Is this, in some way, a thrustwhorty account of the real facts concerning the confinment of amerindians in their reserves? I think not. Hell, I think even history books for kids tell a different story.

“Bioethicists and animal rights organizations may suggest there are new ethical questions which are confronting us, but there really aren’t. (…) We’ve been confronting these questions for a while now, and better genetic modification techniques just amplify them”

I think that in this case quantity trumps everything. Traditional breeding can take decades, even centuries. This kind of research can conceivably frutify in short time, and promote bigger modifications. I’m afraid ethical considerations can have much more impact then.

“The idea that children with Down Syndrome are “perfect” the way they are is a testament to an aspect of our society today which transcends ideology and subculture. The way we are is asserted to be the way we ought to be. We are all beautiful, we are all talented, we are all equal.”

Razib I think you mischaracterize the situation here. Evidently not all people that think children with DS is ok think they are “equal”. A lot of them think they have a right to exist not because they are equal, but because humans are capable of compassion. Many of them go one step ahead and see this as a test by which God tries his flock. Actually I think that a lot of prolifers are of this disposition of mind. So you´re seeing modernity where there is a lot of pre-modern sentiments operating.

Facebook awaits disruption. Maybe virtual reality will do the trick, because, as almost ever happens with incumbents, maybe Facebook will try to adapt VR to Facebook, and the radical winner innovator will build a new kind of network from the roots of what VR allows you to do.

“Unfortunately some of the references to genomics are out of date, because he was writing the book in 2014. ”

This undoubtedly is a pungent tribute to the pace of progress in genomics!

““Any kinds of restrictions or limitations have created the opportunity for me to develop work-arounds,” Garland-Thomson says.”

With all due respect, I think that in the end this is an example of the cognitive bias known as “ownership effect”, by which “we value things more when we own them”. Maybe once gene editing becomes less risky and widely available, minds will change.

But I have issues with eugenics even without the coercion issue. First: you´re thinking about one kind of coercion, say, the state (or the mores of society) ruling out the possibility of abandoning the genetic fate of people to chance. But there is another , more subtle, source of coercion: what if some parcel of the population can´t have access to eugenic tools? In the end, this would guareantee a split in humankind: the rich, that will be improved, and the poor, who will be in increasing dire straits. Social mobility will be a thing of the past.

My second issue with eugenics is that maybe we don´t know so much about the works of evolution. Negative pleiotropy comes to mind, for example.

Well….

Here in Brazil there are so many skin colors that the only way we could find to design affirmative action policies was by creating the concept of “phenotypic discrimination”. While in the USA blood is the great segregator, here in Brazil it´s appearance. That means that discrimination isn´t only a thing with color, but also facial traits, hair, and other indicators of social status. You can have a relatively dark skin, but if your facial traits are fair, you probably will not face discrimination, unless you go to the south of the country, where most people are of italian or german ancestry.

As a result, asians (or at least east asian phenotypes) are rarely discriminated, because you can´t see nothing associated to black phenotypes in them, and also most asians have high social status here.

Maybe american press is emulating this kind of thing. When they say white supremacy, they mean non-black supremacy.

The USA is the biggest porn producer on Earth, farting or not:

“Americans took the lead in global porn production following the Second World War, where thousands of soldiers were trained as semi-professional filmmakers. Using smaller, portable 8- and 16-millimetre cameras to shoot combat footage, these troops learned how to create movies cheaply and flexibly. After the war, some used the new standardized technology to create an independent movie scene outside of Hollywood, the most popular genre of which turned out to be soft-core porn, or what would come to be known as sexploitation.

With the huge popularity of movies such as Russ Meyer’s Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!, would-be filmmakers piled in to the genre and technological innovation exploded. Peep-show booths that ran film loops came first, then camcorders and VCRs—many of which were invented in Japan, but adopted first in the United States by porn directors. Then came the inevitable move to DVD and, finally, the Internet. Along the way, American producers led each technological paradigm shift.

It’s no surprise that Americans are dominating the current stage, with an estimated 89% of porn created in the U.S.”

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/blogs-and-comment/u-s-leads-the-way-in-porn-production-but-falls-behind-in-profits/

But not the biggest consumer:

“According to SimilarWeb’s analysis, the top two countries with the highest share of adult websites are Iraq and Egypt, two socially conservative countries that many wouldn’t have previously thought would factor in the top 10. Rounding out the category are predominantly European nations with the likes of Japan and Peru making up the Asian and South American contingent.

Meanwhile on the list of countries with the longest average session time, East beats West. Middle-Eastern countries along with those in Asia dominate the top of the rankings. Interestingly, neither the the USA, UK or Canada are ranked on the below chart, suggesting that there is a very lucrative market for adult websites overseas’”

http://thenextweb.com/market-intelligence/2015/03/24/who-are-the-biggest-consumers-of-online-porn/#gref

Then maybe the chart Razib brought to discussion isn´t telling all the story. A more acurate analysis should factor porn-induced rapes abroad.

“A pattern of turnovers that we see in Pleistocene Europeans aligns with the idea that socio-cultural boundaries were major fault-lines which were inimical to gene flow. ”

And then we had the Neanderthal admixture.

Proximity or collapse?

Razib, I was following you until the last paragraph. De gustibus non est disputandum, but I really can´t see why on Earth an work of fiction would be more worth if it depicted “realistic” religion systems. I like Le Guin for many reasons, but ever found Tolkien incredibily interesting just because of the almost greek palpability of his theodicy.

Disclaimer: I´m an atheist.

“Brazil’s recent left-wing governments stripped the private sector of investment resources to fund a splurge of popular wealth redistribution schemes. These governments also placed political hacks in positions within the and overseeing/regulating the private sector. Without investment and rational management the private economy that was driving Brazil’s economic miracle began to wither. Basically these governments killed the goose that was laying the golden eggs on which they relied.”

With all respect, some people should refrain the desire to make comments if they don´t have a minimal grasp of the issue they are talking about.

The _minimal _ wealth redistribution during the Worker´s Party rule only was possible because tons of money were distributed to the elites. The development state bank “financed” _ at laughable interest rates _ lots of brazilian firms, there were innumerable laws passing tax breaks to firms, etc. The commodities windfall allowed that, because government revenue skyrocketed in those years.

Actually the amount of money distributed to the well off was many times superior to what was spent with flagship programs like Bolsa Família.

Also, the “economic miracle” was something that happened under the already distant military rule in the 70´s. The market-oriented government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso finished in deep crisis in the beginning of this century _ the economic debacle that ensued was the very reason Lula and the Worker´s Party could win the presidential election in 2002 after three defeats in 89, 94 and 98.

Nevertheless, there were substantive gains in the realm of rights, like quotas to people of color and poor ones in the universities, the general improvement in the labor relationships of domestic workers, housing programs etc.

I’m confused. Weren’t the “founding stock” guys the ones that forcefully invaded a former more homogeneous population?

Neal,

If you´re really going to take the route of moral outrage about the warfare habits of ancient populations, I must warn you that this is a very short road:

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/08/archaeologists-uncover-neolithic-massacre-early-europe

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/slaughter-bridge-uncovering-colossal-bronze-age-battle

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/07/french-archaeologists-unearth-bones-6000-year-old-neolithic-massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Brice%27s_Day_massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Verden

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_B%C3%A9ziers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portadown_massacre

I hope this small list of ancient european massacres can be useful in enlightening you.

Let me rephrase what I said before in benefit of your understanding: why in this good Earth do you think “westerners” have the higher moral ground in this discussion? For the whole of their existence, Westerners have been as violent and immoral as most other peoples living under the sky.

I don´t condemn your display of self-centered righteousness for being self-centered. I condemn it for being dull.

CanSpeccy

It fails me to see how knowing my ethnicity, ideology, religion or geographical location could change the rationality of my observations.

See, I´m not even asking if you are a red-neck, white-trash appalachian. Or a big fat new yorker jew paedophile. Or some asian born boy who seeks acceptance among american whites. Or still worse, some black man from the Ol´South that thinks he has a white soul. No, I´m convinced that I must argue with you just on the merits of your arguments. Please do me the same favour.

Let´s do the following then.

First, please tell me what you think of my concrete argument as initially exposed.

Then I promise to give you some basic information about myself.

All of this in the earnest spirit of not allowing any pre-conceptions to obnubilate your reasoning.

Please see my response to Neal DeGrassyknoll McTython.

woodNfish

Perharps you could use some amount of introspection to verify by yourself that in no occasion in this thread I ever said that amerindian America was a paradise of milk and honey. What I´m saying is that trying to justify the Conquest in moral terms is ludicrous since the history of Europe isn´t exactly a fairy tale.

Well,

Is it ok then when hand-wringing, limp-wristed, bleeding heart, alt rightists fags do the same thing?

Because that was exactly my issue with Jason Liu.

So you think that a question can´t be an argument? Go read your Bible, you fool.

https://mondaymorningreview.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/jesus-answering-questions-with-questions/

On the contrary. Due to the “out of Africa” model, however temperated by recent discoveries concerning admixture with some ancient populations like neanderthals (in Europe) and Denisovans (in Asia), the reality is that the African population shows the greater genetic diversity in the planet, but ameridians, being the last group of human colonizers, are the population with less genetic diversity.

“The original human migration out of Africa occurred approx. 60,000 years ago, towards the Middle East and thereafter independently to Europe and Asia [12]. The Americas were populated by humans of East Asian ancestry that crossed the Bering Strait, about 15 thousand years ago. These first Americans suffered a genetic bottleneck [13]–[15], and the reduced genetic diversity in Amerindians is evidenced in the absolute dominance of the O blood group among Amerindians (Fig. 1), their low heterozygosity and the reduced number of mitochondrial DNA haplogroups [16], [17]”

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2551748/

Have seen that Razib?

http://www.nature.com/news/human-skeleton-found-on-famed-antikythera-shipwreck-1.20632

Schroeder agrees to go ahead with DNA extraction when permission is granted by the Greek authorities. It would take about a week to find out whether the sample contains any DNA, he says: then perhaps a couple of months to sequence it and analyse the results.

The future ever changes.

Verne´s ” Paris au XXe siècle” and Well´s “The Time Machine”, both written in the XIX century, showed a dystopian future. In this they founded a prolific tradition.

In the more optimistic parts of the XX century we sometimes witnessed a more optimistic future a la Jetsons, glittering and clean.

The movies changed that a lot; Star Wars and Alien presented the concept of “old future” to the masses. The first alien movie was descripted as “truck drivers in space” by Ridley Scott himself:

Danny Peary: ln Alien, everything looks old, uninviting, bleak, disheveled. What was the look you wanted for your major set. the starship Nostromo?
Ridley Scott: The look really was meant to reflect the crew members who, l felt, should be like truck drivers in space. Their jobs, which took them on several-year journeys through space, were to them a normal state of affairs. Therein lies the fantasy. The reality would not be like this for maybe a thousand years – but in our tongue-in-cheek fantasy we project a not-too-distant future in which there are many vehicles tramping around the universe on mining expeditions, erecting military installations, or whatever.
At the culmination of many long voyages, each covering many years, these ships — no doubt part of armadas owned by private corporations — look used, beat-up, covered with graffiti, and uncomfortable. We certainly didn’t design the Nostromo to look like a hotel.

As a Brazilian (a country where the majority is mixed-raced, as myself), I would like to remind braziliananon that:

1) Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151001125637.htm)

2) Malnourishment and a lot of other external conditions can negatively affect some of the most acclaimed “universals” markers of beauty, as body symmetry:

” In contrast, random deviations from bilateral symmetry—known as fluctuating asymmetry (Van Valen, 1962)—are indicative of the nonnormal distribution of morphological traits. Fluctuating asymmetry has been shown to increase with exposure to pollutants, parasites, malnutrition, prenatal maternal alcohol consumption, and other adverse conditions during development.” (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3485838/)

Taken together I think that these two caveats would explain most of your perceptions about the mixed country that is Brazil. Most of the traits you don´t like probably are due to 1) personal preferences and 2) effects of poverty etc.

For example, personally I´m not attracted by the average chinese or japanese woman. And you can´t of course make the case that they are “mixed” in the sense that brazilians are. But I have really a thing about “nisseis” _ the daughters of the considerable emigré population of japanese origin here in Brazil. Most of all when they are “mixed” with our native stock, what generally make them more curvy.

So maybe you´re putting a little bit of prejudice before the rational appreciation of the issue.

Sean,

Can´t see the immediate relevance.

Of course a plethora of genetic or congenital pathologies can cause body asymmetry and I didn´t deny it. But I think those reasons are more likely to be important in developed countries. In countries as Brazil, where malnourishment is still a concern and was still more prevalent one or two decades ago, and sanitation (with the associate problems of infectious diseases (re:zika) and parasitosis) is poor, probably this is not the main problem.

1) it´s easy to see that beauty is relative. Not only across countries but also across time (look at european paintures for example). Nowadays porn is a great example also, if you have the curiosity to compare. An admitidely anedoctal but convincing display is given here:

“Some designers in North, South, and Central American countries produced an exaggerated hourglass figure,” the Fractl team said. “Others in European and Asian nations chose to render her so thin that her estimated BMI, according to a survey we conducted, would fall under or dangerously close to [underweight].”

https://onlinedoctor.superdrug.com/perceptions-of-perfection/?utm_source=affiliatewindow&utm_medium=affiliate

2) as I said before, the eradication of famine is relatively recent phenomenon in Brazil. It putatively initiated in 1996 with the economic stabilization that increased the income of families, and gained more impulse post-2003 with “bolsa familia” and other subsidies to the poor.

“In recent years, Brazil has experienced one of the most impressive declines in child malnutrition anywhere in the developing world. According to a comparison of estimates from the Demographic Health Surveys program in probabilistic samples of Brazilian children under five years of age in 1996 and 2006-2007, severe forms of malnutrition, as indicated by a sharp disproportion between weight and height, were virtually eliminated throughout the country, including the Northeast Region, where previously there was still a relevant prevalence of such types of malnutrition. ”

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0102-311X2009000500001&script=sci_arttext&tlng=en

Do the math: someone born in 1996 is twenty years old now, so we still have ample stocks of people with sequels from malnutrition. And 1996 was only the beginning of the process.

Well, that would be very difficult to ascertain.

My impression _ again anedoctical _ is that dental health improved a lot in Brazil since I was a child (half a century ago). But I would not be able to make a fair comparision between Brazil and the USA, a country that I visited only a few times (although I lived there for a few months once).

What I can say is that brazilians are sometimes a vain lot and the more affluent ones will spend tons of money in body improvement _ like teeth withening.

this is very interesting:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-trace-society-s-myths-to-primordial-origins/

“continues to write articles about this association and how it might be causal”

Sorry if my question is stupid, but isn´t J. Philippe Rushton dead? Or you´re talking about another Rushton? Because Wikipedia tells me he passed in 2012.

Good look with your new endeavour. Wish you well.

High intelligence is overrated.

The highest IQ people, the Jews, managed to be almost exterminated by the Germans in the II WW. After that, they choose to relocate to the only other place on Earth where they could face another extermination.

The second highest IQ people, the Han, managed to be almost destroyed by the colonial powers of Europe, then choose to be transformed in a communist hell for the most part of the XX century.

Meanwhile the dumb swedes……….https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Americans