Disqus - Latest Comments for razib

Re: Imposing Ramadan on non-Muslims

razib — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 23:55:01 -0000

I don’t get it. Don’t these people realise the impact of these stories? Can they not predict them? Why give the Daily Mail fodder?

well, if they hang out only with their own kind....

Re: Don’t forget the African Americans

razib — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:59:33 -0000

They also form around 50% of the Democratic party’s base and are seen as its most loyal constituency.

that's too high sunny. about 2/3 of black americans are identified democrats. most of the rest are dem-leaning independents. dem part identification is around 35% of the pop last i checked. you can do the math.

Re: Some Thoughts on The Extended Family

razib — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 23:47:26 -0000

Close knit families are a huge deal in Italy, Spain, Mexico, Arab countries, etc. It is not true that Desis are the only ones.

my fiance has lived in italy for 2 years. we meet her italian friends now. italians are grown-up babies, especially the men. the tendencies we're talking about are not desi vs. white, they're "modern northwest european" vs. everyone else. i think the "modern northwest european" modality is going to spread though....

(some of the reasons that people are familial in bangladesh are prosaic, the country is f-king small!!! you move 50 miles away, and you can still keep in touch)

Re: Some Thoughts on The Extended Family

razib — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:35:21 -0000

also, on me being strange. that's probably true. i would submit that perhaps societies which are "familial" are just as happy as societies which are "non-familial" in terms of total summed satisfaction. but there is a difference in distribution, i would bet in non-familial societies the abnormal non-stupid is more likely to flourish to a far greater extent. now, granted, there are far fewer abnormal non-stupids than normal stupids in any society, but the familialist societies are really geared toward maintaining tard-satisfaction IMO. conformity to majority norms means by definition conformity to tardishness. in a non-familial society the normal stupids might have slightly less satisfaction because they have fewer fellow tards to talk with and go about their main activities of eating, breeding, gossiping and excreting, but it will be a marginal difference for them since they are the vast majority in any society anyway. they can always find someone "interesting" to interact with.

all that being, the non-tard segment is important in the production of innovation and economic growth on a macroscale. only a small proportion of the population contributes to this, and i suspect that extended family societies don't encourage the extension of these individuals into areas where they might make an impact. familial societies are good at perfecting and perpetuating pededstrianism. not that there's anything wrong with that.

Re: Some Thoughts on The Extended Family

razib — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:24:34 -0000

However, I strongly doubt that the extended family is the root of the problems which Steve and Razib have identified.

sure, i agree with that. i don't think the extended family is the-root-of-all-evil. in a third world society where there aren't many systems to dampen economic "shocks" the extended family is necessary. it's pretty much the norm in human history to depend on relations.

there are two things i would say though.

1) it might be a stifling stationary state. there is some thinking that the west is peculiar in part because of the demographic chaos after the black death, when there was more value to labor because of the population decline. that might have pushed european societies in a different direction through historically contingent processes. in other words, these clannish societies constrain themselves to remaining the way they are because

a) without broader non-familial civil society institutions which push the economies of scale can't flourish (bureaucracy, corporations, etc.)

b) without those institutions as an alternative to familialism then it is necessary to reject non-familialism because you need fallback positions

2) familialism is NOT necessary in a modern western nation where there is the welfare state. familialism can slowly erode away civil society too if too many people just opt-out of the system so that spillover effects no longer occur from prosocial behavior which fosters civil society.

the main exception i see to #2 are family businesses. but familialism is common among some immigrant groups where they want their offspring to become professionals, where integration into broader society is probably the best bet in terms of long term success.

Re: States of Islam

razib — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 16:53:05 -0000

ali is good people. check out the diaries, there is some interesting stuff there.

Re: A reply to Soumaya Ghannoushi

razib — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 02:39:23 -0000

she should wear a niqab! her fit face is distracting the men. what did she say anyway?

Re: White Mughals, brown Brits

razib — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 17:06:18 -0000

Well Salat — the 5 daily prayers — is one of the five pillars of Islam and is considered compulsory on all orthodox interpretations.

then they'll be non-orthodox. the alawites don't consider salat mandatory, for example, and though it was politics the ithna ashari recognized them as ithna ashari in the 1970s, and most recognize the ithna ashari as muslim.* my contention is that religion is subject to weak inherent constraints, that social consensus is what matters. muhammad said, 'the believers shall not agree upon error.' amen!

but I would guess that ritual does play an important role, especially in Evangelical circles where the Charismatic preacher seems to take on something of a shamanistic role and his performances are designed as if to bypass the rational.

well, charismatics actually de-emphasize ritual in a structured liturgical sense. their shamanism is real, but this occurs in most 'low church' manifestations of religion. it is spontaneous and unstructured, in other words it morphs according to the needs and inclinations of the believers. this is a far cry from the halakha of jews or shriat, which is codified and handed down from on high. but even jews and muslims rework their faith and ritual dictates according to circumstances. two examples:

when russia conquered muslims there was a debate among the muslims where it was permissible to live under infidel rule, the muslim notables agreed it was permissible so long as islam could be practiced freely. the ottoman padishah tacitly supported this position (there were migrations to the ottoman empire by muslism who believed it was impermissible).

jews once had a debate whether it was permissible to use christian churches as meeting houses or religious occasions (synagogues, etc.). are christians non-monotheists whose houses of worship are therefore defiled? in the european christian lands it was agreed that this was permissible, that christians are monotheists, though a very strong line of thinking in judaism has held that trinitarianism and catholic idolatry and orthodox iconagraphy violate the commandments of god.

* i tend to believe that the alawites have non-muslim origins as a syncretistic sect, but in the modern middle east the public (as opposed to private) cant is that they are muslim.

Re: White Mughals, brown Brits

razib — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 16:00:03 -0000

’m strongly of the opinion that for any religion/sect, its members’ adherence to a particular set of rituals is absolutely essential for that religion/sect’s longterm viability; and indeed that ritual is one of the central engines of all religious and mystical belief. Ritual is important because it often seems irrational, & to lack purpose: in part it’s a way of testing allegiance & obedience.

ritual is important to most religions, though less so in some than in others. american religion, which has been shaped by the anti-sacramental and liturgical bias of the radical reformation tends to be more predicated on loose and fluid congregational associations cemented by common professions of belief. catholicism has started to take this flavor in the 'american church' (some would argue that american catholicism influenced vatican ii in moving the church as a whole in that direction). jews have had an ambivalent attitude toward this reality, as they are still generally still an ethnic community as well as a religion, but they have to deal with the dominant ethos as it is, and that is one where confession and choice are normative. even american muslims are accepting this, as i note a strange tendency toward arminianism among the rank and file at odds with the more anti-arminian (they wouldn't call it that :) tendency in sunni orthodoxy worldwide. the unmooring of religion from ritual in the american context has, in general, made the reliance of the laity on the clerisy provisional. so, yes, long term viability of one denomination is destroyed, as churches and groups mutate, decline, arise and orgies of creative destruction. this has prevented some of the ennui which seems to plague european christianity by immunizing american faith from institutional decay since institutions are secondary, but it has also resulted in (i believe) some shallowness of faith as well because of a "mcchurch" attitude.

BTW, and I know this is waaaaaaaaay off thread, but have you read Mutual Aid by Kropotkin, Razib, and if so what d’ya think?

heart was in the right place. only a small piece of the puzzle in mass societies though...laws a necessity i'm afraid. (i read it years and years ago)

Re: White Mughals, brown Brits

razib — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 15:29:15 -0000

precisely, there is a cross-cultural tendency for women to be more religiously 'orthodox' within any given culture....

Re: White Mughals, brown Brits

razib — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 15:26:50 -0000

my opinions re: the "inevitability" of partiarchy. i think terming it 'feminine' isn't exactly what i'm going for, but i think it accords with the general flavor of the implications of my assertions.

Re: White Mughals, brown Brits

razib — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 14:28:44 -0000

Muslims in different parts of the world also became much more self-aware of how they were viewed upon by other Muslims.

i have mooted the possibility that worldwide transport, and the relative commonality of the hajj, has resulted in a tendency toward conformity amongst the ummah that was not possible (or not implementable) in pre-modern times. if you look at the ethnological studies of the hui in china (chinese speak muslims) you see this clearly, during the 1980s when contacts with the worldwide islamic community were re-established hajjis came back and came into conflict with local leaders who had developed non-normative islamic practices during the 30-40 years of relative isolation under communism. in fact, hui muslims have an intellectul tradition going back to the 17th and 18th century justifying islam using confucian exemplars and standards of proper virtue ('western wisdom').

i do not believe that any particular religious interpretation of a scripture is 'inevitable,' but, i do believe that social mediated truths are important and the permeating effect of information technology, and the relative prosperity of the gulf countries, have in the 20th century given strength and succor to particular interpretations of islam (it isn't like deobandi strictures weren't homegrown, and there is some evidence of possible influence from islamic thinkers in 19th century on intellectuals and clerics in the arab world and some cross-fertilization with salafism as it was developing).

However, this is not the whole story, and a number of supposedly Islamist or fundamentalist Islamic figures had a favourable view of Sufism, e.g., Khomeni, Hassan I Banna.

the definitions and categorie are deceptive. khomeni was a shia after all who did not reject mutazili methodology, nor did he revoke the right to vote given to women. i think it is hard to place him in the same cateogry as the salafi clerics who support a pro-western regime in saudi arabia. some of the sufi orders, like the naqshbandiya are quite orthodox in their interpretation of islam. when i say 'mysticism' i might perhaps say 'localized syncretism.' the hindu-muslim synthesis common in the bengali countryside is giving way to a more 'pure' islam, or, outright secularism. there is sufism like the naqshbandiya, but there is also sufism like the bektashi. i think that the latter, which in large part accepts syncretism, is at a disadvantage right now. you are seeing the same in java. the rise of modernity seems to be accompanied by a casting off of rural pieties and hardening rationalistic boundaries. you saw the same thing with the spread of the print press and literacy during the reformation and the counter-reformation.

Re: White Mughals, brown Brits

razib — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 13:44:08 -0000

Thirdly, as happens in all groups and communities, as a younger generation emerges from under the shadows of the previous generation it begins to question the older generation’s beliefs and its way of doing things, and even its adherence to its stated principles. That process will inevitably result in a more assertive, more ideological strain of faith, at least among Muslims, and a need for a strong sense of self-identity — especially in the midst of a culture that is so vacuous.

it isn't inevitable among non-muslims. in the USA catholics and jews have 'protestantized' their religion, it is arguably less exclusivist, ritualistic, and more individualistic like american protestantism in general. the joke about reform judaism is that they are 'christians with curly hair.' of course, abandoning ritual judaism & strict adherence to halakha were pretty much necessary for integration into the wider society in the 19th and early 20th century. today there are more accommodations to ritually observant jews, but it is still difficult.

the point about muslims become more 'rigorous' is interesting, because i think there is something to this insofar as 'mystic' strains of islam seem locally rooted and dependent on regional context. sufi mysticism tied to pilgrimage sites of charisma of descendents of a pir are hard to transfer across the ocean. in contrast, an axiomatic scripture based religion is more portable. in java you see the urban middle class being attracted to an 'arabicized' form of islam in the 19th century as they were extracted out of the mystical context of the javanese countryside. even in south asia there has been a revival of more 'rigorous' forms of islam which a transnational scriptural outlook since the 18th century and deep into the 20th century. i think there are some inevitable tendencies for religions to change as literacy and decentralization of power and social mobility emerge.

Re: White Mughals, brown Brits

razib — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 00:29:52 -0000

The most controversial opinion he holds is that there are minor differences of intelligence/IQ between races (and among ethnic groups).

hm. the differences are not "minor." e.g., two normal distributions where one has a mean of 100 and another 85, with a standard deviation of 15? excel wizards can play with that, but though there is overlap the difference in means has a big effect.

Why do you think Popper is “out-of-place?”

popper is a classical liberal. he was also an explicit cosmopolitan and citizen of the world. he defended the choice his parents made of converting from judaism to christianity to further the lives of their children in austria of the time, for him ancestral ties were trivialities. he begged off being included in a list of 'famous jews' because though he was ancestrally jewish he was not part of that community nor did he avow that religion and though he aided others to escape the nazis when possible he was totally without interest in expressing ethnic solidarity. the man idolized bertrand russell for god's sake!

Re: White Mughals, brown Brits

razib — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 21:57:36 -0000

With all due respect Sunny,
Mr Sailer is a gazillion times more intelligent and influential than your dear self. And, more importantly, he is a lot more courteous to his interlocutors.

which is why i doubt steve would tell someone that someone else is a lot smarter than they are after they offer up the nominal courtesies of respect :)

p.s. popper seems out of place on your list

Re: White Mughals, brown Brits

razib — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 20:10:19 -0000

just to be clear, my contention about roman era settlement isn't because want to be "right." i just want to clear about the controversies which do exist within the field of historical genetics in britain (this is a big field as i said). this post is a quick sketch for those interested.

Re: White Mughals, brown Brits

razib — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 20:05:45 -0000

As I understand it the discoveries made from genetic tracing are growing and changing all the time so you may well be correct. On the other hand you and Bryan Sykes may well be wrong

the change is not random. it is converging upon particular conclusions. e.g., are the 'english' 20% or 60% anglo-saxon vs. pre-anglo-saxon? are the english more like the dutch or the welsh? you probably misremember the open university finding, i am willing to bet a fair amount of money that no one would say 20% of the ancestry is attributable to roman settlement. science converges upon consenses with greater and greater precision. like i said, i keep track of this field because england has a lot of evolutionary geneticists interested in their home country's history and so a lot of papers are published on it. you must have misheard about the roman era settlement.

Re: White Mughals, brown Brits

razib — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 19:11:17 -0000

You link to the one-and-only Steve Sailor on your awesome blog!

*shrug* steve's controversial, but he's a friend of mine. we've had lunch when i was in LA.

(***DUCK***)

Re: White Mughals, brown Brits

razib — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 18:42:15 -0000

From what I hear Fundamentalist American Evangelist groups are giving the same sort of educational and material ’support’ to impoverished Christian communities across Africa, Asia and South America, and in the process imposing their own particular versions of Christianity on these communities.

which is why evangelical christians are blowing up subways in south korea, brazil and nigera!

(there are conflicts that occur because of evangelical christianity, but they tend not to be this extreme)

Re: White Mughals, brown Brits

razib — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 18:40:46 -0000

The boffins had found genes that dated back to the Roman colonisation in about 20% of modern Britons. These Roman soldiers in Britain were mainly Africans from the north - Carthaginians - and therefore of Phoenician/Lebanese descent. No wonder we like kebabs so much

this is probably false (i have never seen a number around 20% for roman era for britain, and i keep track of this stuff). i have a review copy of bryan sykes Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland, and sykes only found a few % in southern england that was likely datable to roman era settlement. the anglo-saxon settlement, or that of the norse in the danelaw, was far more significant in terms of altering the genetic substrate.

Re: White Mughals, brown Brits

razib — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 17:47:25 -0000

The problem with this analysis is that a good number of religious British Muslims of Pakistani/Indian/Bangladeshi descent are actually spurning many aspects of “traditional” culture because they feel that this culture isn’t Islamic enough or that it reflects a diluted and impure form of Islam, one that leaves them unable to cope with the temptations and challenges of Modern Western Society.

they're creating a new more 'authentic' islam. and thanks to the discovery of oil in the gulf in the 20th century a salafist flavor has a lot of money backing it via 'educational' material and support.

Re: White Mughals, brown Brits

razib — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 15:55:02 -0000

mill & the utilitarians looked at traditional european culture with its customs and traditions and wanted to reshape it into a more rational and pragmatic course. they had the same attitude toward non-western cultures. whether benthamite utilitarianism was culture-neutral (e.g., a system of universally applicable heuristics) i'll leave to others to debate :)

Re: White Mughals, brown Brits

razib — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 15:52:51 -0000

mill on the brownz:

In 1817, Mill produced his massive History of India, which he had been working on the side for many years. Its analysis was clearly inspired by the conjectural histories typical of the Scottish Enlightenment: India was deemed a nation just emerging out of its barbarian stage and saw the English role as a civilizing mission (although he would later famously claim that the British Empire was "a vast system of outdoor relief for the upper classes"). He defended the rule of the East India Company (rather than the English government). Mill recommended several reforms for India, perhaps the most interesting was his call for the elimination of taxes and the complete nationalization of land (EIC fiscal revenue would thus arise from rents -- which were easier to collect and less distortionary). The success of his History led him to be hired by the London office of the East India Company in 1823, which provided him with financial security for the remainder of his life.

Re: White Mughals, brown Brits

razib — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 14:47:05 -0000

It would seem that, once established, the instinct of the first colonialists was to explore and absorb (at least some of) the culture in which they found themselves, and it was political considerations which wrenched them onto another path. Relevant indeed.

the first colonialists were capitalists, they were in it for the profit. that probably explains their pragmatism. also, it wasn't just the evangelicals who had issues with assimilation into the native culture, secular utilitarians like james mill did too.

Re: White Mughals, brown Brits

razib — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 12:36:58 -0000

Well, that’s the point. The number of “indigenous” Brits with some Indian ancestors may be higher than people in general may realise. Even William Dalrymple stumbled across records of a Bengali female ancestor during the course of his research for the book.

there is a difference between genealogical ancestry and genetic contribution. the genetic contribution of south asians within the last 300 years to the UK gene pool was small before the last generation or two (e.g., before mass immigration). nevertheless, if you trace lines of genealogy back i suspect many, if not the majority, of british people might be able to trace a line of descent back to someone non-white, and in the case of the UK south asian, pretty easily. consider that the whole of the european nobility is descended from a west african slave woman because of the son she bore to one of the sforza line in the early 1500s. this does not mean that all of the european nobility carries a unique genetic signature from this individual, only that they can trace a line of descent. in other words, if british in the UK are 1% south asian from pre-1950 it is likely that a much large percentage can trace lines of descent than would carry unique pieces of genetic information (inheritance is discrete).

the prevalence of miscegenation in lieu of european women is common in settler colonies during the first generations. all 'old stock' americans (here before 1776) can probably trace lines of descent to native americans. the 'dutch' governor of the cape colony who first institute bans on cross-racial marriages in the mid-1600s had a half-bengali mother. and so on.

What if your ancestors were Hindu or Sikh hahaha then you’d be an infeeedel

almost all south asian muslims have hindu ancestors. almost all hindus have pre-hindu ancestors.

Some of the similarities are striking. Perhaps history can teach some lessons to those of us who are modern-day Brits, regardless of our ethnicity or religious affiliation.

well, i think perhaps a better model are parsis in india or jews in europe. europeans and half-europeans were the ruling caste, muslims do not come as that, in fact they are disproportionately represented in the underclass (please note that european jews were notoriously poor before emancipation).

Re: Britons believe Bush more dangerous than Kim Jong-il

razib — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:19:09 -0000

Danger = Probability X Weight of Danger

makes sense, perhaps humans are prewired with conditional probabilities?

Re: Can liberals deal with extremists?

razib — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 03:04:11 -0000

And she doesn’t explain what would happen if Christians decided to express their faith by turning the other cheek

when has this every happened with a christian majority society in a position to impose their will on others? (the christians who were conquered by muslims don't count since they were generally monophysites who were at tension with the melkite elite who were decapitated by the invading arabs). so that is a moot point.

Or worse, given that Christians have persecuted Jews for longer than Muslims

this is a strange point since christianity predates islam by 600 years, and was a religion of imperium for about 250 years before the rise of islam. the christian emperors up 'till theodosius had relatively amicable associations with jews compared to the later tensions (early christians detested jews for religious rivalry reasons, but even theodosius the great maintained good relations with the leaders of the jewish community around 400). overall christian nations have an atrocious record in how they treat jews, nevertheless, the past few hundred years have been better (though there has been concomittant secularism).

more people move from Muslim-majority countries to Britain than from here to there. So clearly Muslims too prefer the secular and safe environment the UK offers compared to their own countries.

:) come now, they prefer secular environments? yes, safe, surely, who doesn't? economically vibrant. large and secure welfare states. a right to express themselves however they wish. but this doesn't mean that the root values of liberalism which we presume lead to all these goods are things that muslims, or humans in general, truly support. they certainly don't support them back in the homelands. this does not mean subsequent generations might not have different more liberal values, but i am skeptical about the 1st gen. though perhaps i'll look up survey data.

Actually I believe that London is becoming increasingly Christianised and will continue to do so; but not on the back of white Britons but African immigrants.

phil jenkins makes this point in the next christianity.

There is also the implication that liberals and secularists are wimps.

liberal and secular societies are fearsome and unstoppable in war against pre-modern societies. it isn't about implementation, it's about will.

The trick for liberals is to find a way of isolating and dealing with religious extremists while stopping a slide towards a police state

agreed, i pray for you on that side of the pond....

Re: Some quickies

razib — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 17:40:35 -0000

interesting intercontinental contrast...here in the states flag burners tend to be left-wing activists, and they're the target of legislation (i can't think off the top of my head ever seeing muslims engage in these displays, but here in the states muslims are likely to be busy professionals and overworked businesspersons, so no time :) one time i remember watching an episode of a chat show and the actor peter coyote was criticizing the united states, and a conservative asked, "if you thing there is so much wrong with this country why do you live here?" coyote responded, "because in this country i can!" that elicited an enormous round of clapping, and even coyote's critic smiled and clapped.

Re: Some quickies

razib — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 16:42:05 -0000

I;ve never heard it mentioned - but is Tiger as in Tiger Woods supposed to be a reference to his mixed race background - as in black and yellow? I believe the preferred term in teh USA is “Blasian”.

i think 'tiger' was the nickname for a vietnamese man who fought with woods' father:

Born Eldrick Woods in Cypress, California, he was nicknamed “Tiger” after Vuong Dang Phong, a friend of his father’s.

Re: Some quickies

razib — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 02:04:15 -0000

two points, first

When Tiger Woods went on Oprah to declare himself mixed race, not black, it caused outrage across the United States.

i think this is hyperbolic, it didn't cause "outrage across the United States." some black political leaders called him out, and most black americans tacitly accept the one-drop rule, but it isn't like someone like tiger woods doesn't have the ability to define himself how he wants. his is 1/4 black, 1/2 asian (mixed chinese and thai), 1/8 white and 1/8 native american. he is a believing buddhist. his identity is more complex than just his black heritage. he grew up in california where the black-white dichotomy isn't the norm, both latinos (who come in all shades) and asians (who are multiracial, from browns to yellows, etc.) outnumber blacks. i think part of the disconnect with the woods issue is that east coast media tend to work in the old black-white paradigm and woods is a west coast kid who wasn't preconditioned for this.

second, the statistics for inter-ethnic marriage need to be considered. they are 2% of all marriages in the UK. note:

Among people who described their ethnic group as ‘Other’, 56 per cent of women and 34 per cent of men had married outside their ethnic group and most had married a White person. This Other group includes people from the Philippine Islands, Malaysia, Japan, Vietnam and various middle-eastern countries.
People who described their ethnic group as ‘Other Black’, largely young Black people born in Britain, were the next most likely to be married to someone outside their ethnic group, followed by Black Caribbean people. Almost five in ten Other Black men (48 per cent) and three in ten Black Caribbean men (29 per cent) were married to women outside the Black ethnic group, in most cases White women.

the intersection between the "mixed" and "black" sets is enormous. i think the rest of the article is more intelligible in that light.

Re: Did you know..

razib — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 22:28:45 -0000

1) his mother is german. from his resume:

LANGUAGES German (native), English

2) his younger brother looks a lot like my younger brother

3) Just to remid 3 nobel prize winners of the Indian sub-continent are all Bengalis:

perhaps it is a typo rezwan, but raman & chandraksekar were tamil iyers, khorana & salam punjabis.

Re: Hindu Forum’s mask drops

razib — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 20:59:06 -0000

uh, sunny what did the quote from my comment have to do with the rest of your post?

Re: Hindu Forum’s mask drops

razib — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 19:17:30 -0000

Jai, I assumed when you introduced him, that we would get at least reasonable debate from Razib. He’s proving to be pretty fundamentalist if you ask me.

your contention would be more credible if you didn't concern yourself with my handle. i don't want to be confused for muslims, i find it insulting, it's as simple as that.

Re: Hindu Forum’s mask drops

razib — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 17:05:24 -0000

Majority of them just take the bitter pill and leave it to (as they say ‘Raam Bharose’) in the hand of God Himslef.

of course, and this is why secularists tend to respect hindus as civilized people as opposed to the primitive performance of many muslims. of course, some hindus perceive that their leaders and community is supine and not assertive enough vis-a-vis the muslim community, but if the goth sacks rome shall one rape and pillage in emulation of his masculine grandeur? speaking as an atheist the solution is to ramp up blasphemy against islam to match that against christianity or hinduism. all religions are equal in the eyes of their non-existent gods :)

Re: Hindu Forum’s mask drops

razib — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 16:43:02 -0000

Why oh why would sikhs and hindus want to be put into the same groupings as thge likes of you?

uh, as in "you" are you talking about me? i'm not a muslim, and don't identify as such. but i'll add that to my handle since it might be necessary.

True enough but i am referring to the whole idea of PC identity politics which is quite harmful to human relations.Diversity training which tells you which terms to use or not use is harmful to human relations. It is also patronising as it presumes that we can not handle any level of offence.

i reject PC identity politics myself. but, i think it is important to engage lest we cede ground and lose the war by default.

Re: Hindu Forum’s mask drops

razib — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 15:36:31 -0000

to be clear, as an american i'm not invested in whether brownz are 'asian' or not on your side of the pond, and i am generally one who favors intermarriage and cultural extinction of brown groups in the west anyhow (looking at your intermarriage numbers, even for 'successful' groups you are a lot less prone to mixing in cream than on this side of the pond). my only point is that the reality is that labels are relevant and effect our lives, so i don't see discussion of them worthless. we are a species with a fixation on names.

Re: Hindu Forum’s mask drops

razib — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 15:22:38 -0000

"No Razib if you do not take offence a word loses its power. "

and if religious people did not kill in the name of god evil would not be done in his name.

Re: Hindu Forum’s mask drops

razib — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 14:54:36 -0000

I do object to this obsession about language which has developed on this thread. Calm down the lot of you.

how people are defined is relevant in how groups relate to the government, especially when that gov. disburses services and monies to groups as opposed to individuals. one reason that browns in the USA pushe to be classified as asian american (we were once in our own category, then lumped with 'whites' like middle eastern people) is for preferential treatment in bidding for government contracts. in san francisco some chinese american business persons actually attempted to declassify brownz as asian american so that they could get a bigger piece of the contract pie. similarly, some southeast asian refugees in california want to be classified separately from other asian american groups (chinese, japanese, korean and brown) for purposes of university admissions because they are relatively deprived vis-a-vis other asian groups but they get the same 'asian penalty' of higher standards for admission to selective universities.

people have killed over shibboleths and nuances over language, so i think sunny's 'obsession' is warranted :)

Re: Hindu Forum’s mask drops

razib — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 13:05:19 -0000

come from a community which officialy has Britains highest home ownersip rate. Lowest crime rate. Lowest prison polulation rate. Highest academic achievement rate and highest level of affluence. So what on earth would I have in common with ‘muslim asians’?
your're chinese?

Re: One day we’ll all be brown…

razib — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 14:02:32 -0000

jai, i'm all about helping people with their 'research.'

Re: One day we’ll all be brown…

razib — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 13:15:32 -0000

Daniella Alonso. puerto rico & japanese peruvian.

Re: One day we’ll all be brown…

razib — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 13:09:44 -0000

Yes I know, that’s why I added the link. Much like this story is also full of crap.

i checked the source cuz i assumed it was a hoax. this is traceable to a real person and a real institute.

Re: One day we’ll all be brown…

razib — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 13:04:52 -0000

I think I mentioned this before, but there was a story circulating that blondes would be extinct by 200 years, here’s a link to it:

that was a hoax. the genetics behind is also fallacious, it is blending genetics just as the one above.

an analogy. consider you have 5 tosses of a coin, "heads or tails" (you have that analogy on that side of the pond, right?). there is a 50/50 shot of heads or tails on each try. to get 5 heads in a row (5 out of 5) you have a 3% shot, and 5 tails you have a 3% shot. the highest chance is that you'll get 2.5...but of course, that really means that the mode (highest number) will be 2 or 3 for each. skin color is the same, the genes can be thought of as probabilities at each location, so the chances can be shifted, but the variation remains latent.

Re: One day we’ll all be brown…

razib — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 12:19:26 -0000

So it looks like everyone in the future is going to be a Jatt or a Pathan !

you mean the women will have mustaches?

Re: One day we’ll all be brown…

razib — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 12:18:55 -0000

we will not all be brown! this is false. brown skin is not dominant, genetics is not blending!

let me repeat: this guy got his idea that we'll all be brown out of two things (i suspect):

1) science fiction
2) or a pre-mendelian conception of genetics

it is not true!!!

i apologize for all the bold, but i've spent a lot of time trying to explain to people issues relating to genetics and this misconception comes up over & over again.

a) we know about 4-5 genes control most of the variation in skin color (most = 90% or so of the variation between populations, though not within populations)

b) we know that east asians and europeans are "light" for different reasons on these genes

c) dark people are probably dark because most of the 4-5 are on. the more you have that are "on," the darker you are. so, someone who is "brown" probably has half of the genes on, and someone who is black has most of them on, and someone who is white has most of them off.

d) you yourselves are mostly south asian, look around you, are south asians homogenized into exactly the same shade of brown? are families exactly the same blended shade of brown? are siblings the same shade of brown equidistant between their parents?

c) brown is the expectation, but the variance will remain. some of you mention brazil, there are dozens of racial definitions precisely because of the perpetuation of variation in a admixed scenario

d) race mixture will increase variation, not reduce it. some individuals will have east asian features, brown skin, blue eyes. some individuals will have european features and black skin and blonde hair

more links: here, here, here, here, , here,here, here and here.

Re: Religious debates

razib — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 13:07:35 -0000

and just to be specific, if you turned all the sunnis into shia in iraq, or all the shia into sunnis, there would still be division (e.g., akbari vs. usuli, salafi vs. hanafi), but would there be no qualitative change?

Re: Religious debates

razib — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 12:42:17 -0000

That kind of brain-drain from poor countries to the West seriously damages the potential for development in those countries and is therefore immoral.

1) empirically the brain drain tends to hit africa much harder than india or china, so if you want to make this argument you have to apply it to african countries.

2) though i hold it is just as immoral to cordon smart people into countries into failing countries where their intellectual capital will go wasted because of a culture of nepotism, venality and corruption.

sonia, you can quibble with definitions all you like, but the united states had a 40 year period of reduced immigration between 1925 and 1965. social anomie which emerged from 'diversity' was palpably less of a problem in 1965 than in 1925.

Re: Religious debates

razib — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 01:29:17 -0000

also, let me state my own general political stance re: race, religion, culture in the west, for the sake of readers of this site so they know where i came from: i believe that western nations should cease allowing immigration aside from a small super-elite of scientists and scholars. i believe that the west needs to assimilate and absorb the minorities it has now, and i believe that some minorities such as muslim are in the short term extremely problematic. in short, many of my attitudes and policy stances are very right-wing. but the reasoning for my position has to do with my enthusiasm for the perpetuation of the culture of the symposium in the modern west. i value honest and informed analysis of issues above all, and cognition in the ends. my main reason for objecting to amir's comments are not disagreemants of policy (i suspect i am closer to he than most here), but because i find casual & lax usage of intellectual arguments offensive. most of 'civilized' history is characterized by intellectual discourse being sophistic rhetoric and propoganda, and the anglo-saxon world has broken out of that box. for now.

Re: Religious debates

razib — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 01:15:36 -0000

The reason for the unending discussion about the existence of God is that our scientific knowledge cannot explain the beginnings of the universe in which we live, and that the missing parts of the equation might conceivably be divine.

this is empirically false. this is the reason intellectuals give, but most people are not intellectuals. see religion explained and in gods we trust for the cognitive anthropological state-of-the-art for why people are religious. a 1998 survey by frank sulloway and michael shermer provided an interesting result: most religious people ascribe their own religiosity to cosmological questions, but, they ascribe the religiosity of others to psychological variables (fear of death, comfort, etc.).

There’s an even larger tradition which doesn’t.

you oversimplify roman catholic tradition. after all, muhammad is not in the deepest level of dante's hells because he is from an alien tradition, it is because he leads a heretical counterfeit tradition.

owes its existence to the Protestant work ethic.

no, i think that is false. but in any case, the consensus in social science today rejects webber's original hypothesis and model (it isn't born out by the german examples he initially used). you can continue to assert this truism, but i am simply stating for the record that this is not the scholarly consensus. the point about religious tolerance is particularly humorous, seeing as you post on a forum populated by members of one of the most promiscuously religiously tolerant traditions in the world: hinduism. i suppose hindu rishis were time travelers who went into the future to learn of latitudinarianism from the acolytes of the broad church?

And the Christian conservatism represented by the Central Powers would have been greatly strengthened by their victory. Instead, the fall of the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian monarchies let the poisons of post-modernism loose upon the West, and upon the world.

you meander here from protestantism to christianity, unless i am wrong and austro-hungary was not catholic and russia orthodox?

I agree. Christianity, at first, was preached by Jews to Jews, as a reformed Judaism, until it was changed by St. Paul, who was determined to admit gentiles without demanding circumcision or submission to the Mosaic Law.

you misunderstand me. starks' argument, which i am agnostic about, but which is more plausible that your quaint martyr thesis (which is convincing only to christians who are convinced of the truth of their faith a priori), is that hellenistic judaism served as a percursor for the spread of christianity deep into the 3rd century. christianity did not spread by the blood of the martyrs, but via more prosaic factors of cultural diffusion. additionally, as i noted before christianity was a thin elite over much of europe for nearly 1,000 years. christianity was not the official religion of the roman empire until theodosius the great banished the pagan cults, and even into the reign of his grandson in the early 5th century pagans were such a large proportion of the centurionate that theodosius II had to revoke a ban on pagans in the officer corp because they were so depleted with those who protested and left. my point is that christianity did not win simply by force of example of the martyrs, even when christian mobs tore down pagan temples like the serapion in alexandria and assault pagans in their private rites the old religion survived for several centuries in the shadow of the new dispensation which ascended through the iron grip of the most christian emperors.

But what you’re forgetting is that many secular traditions – i.e. nationalism, socialism, anarcho-primitivism – are religious in nature./i>

i think you debase the term 'religion.'

don’t realise how much of our thought, our law, our education, our family relations, are founded on Christian rules and practice

please don't lecture me on history, i take a keen interesting in church history. you ascribe to christianity all that is great and noble in the west, but many pagans and secularists assert that christianity swallowed whole the greatness of the pre-christian west and made it in its own image. the Corpus Juris Civilis was reformed to bring it into line with christian morality, but its basic core was still roman and classical. platonic and later aristotelian philosophy was brought in line with christian principles (e.g., a created universe), but its fundaments were pre-christian. christianity imposed monogamy on the pagan tribes of europe, but that monogamy was adopted from greo-roman practice. as for our education, the classical education is based on the liberal arts of the ancients.

i do not deny christianity a critical role is a vessel for the greatness that is, was, and will be, western culture, but, i hold that you elide the importance of the distinctive strands this culture. i do hold the west precious, and i do reject the validity of sharia and its barbarism, but, the fundamental core value for me is a reflective analysis of the world as it is, and as it was, and that requires a more nuanced understanding of the historical issues which have led us to where we are than i can see in your comments above.

Re: Religious debates

razib — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 23:21:03 -0000

is that it speaks to profound questions to which many millions of people seek answers. N

no, the questions aren't profound. yes, religion is omnipresent and will be, but that's because most people aren't very bright and habitually demon-haunted.

Christianity has very little in common with Islam, and Islam has very little in common with Christianity

there is a long tradition of christian thought which dissents from this. see st. john of damascus (the last church father) Concerning Heresy, clearly he (and many christians) viewed islam as a debased derivation of christianity. this does not bespeak someone who says there is 'little in common.'

But it has also prevented the culture from having strong cohesive or defensive powers.

protestantism served british culture for several hundred years. do you think it mysteriously lost those powers after world world ii? perhaps it is the god who answers the 'profound questions' you allude to who
wills it?

who inherit 99% of their dispositions from Protestantism

this is false. see Alternative Tradition: A Study of Unbelief in the Ancient World. unbelievers like the carvakas, skeptics, cynics, epicureans, xunzi have emerged in most civilized cultures. certainly the religious tradition of the culture in which they arise shape the nature of their unbelief, but it is false to say that atheism is someone a response to protestantism.

The Christian faith conquered the Roman Empire because Christians took their commandments very literally. These were the countless martyrs who died under hideous tortures to bear witness to Christ’s resurrection.

this seems false. see the rise of christianity by rodney stark for the relatively small numbers of martyrs, and the stronger correlation with hellenistic judaism as loci of christian growth. see the barbarian conversion and the germanization of early medieval christianity to see that the nature of 'christendom' was a rather shallow affair, and real christianization for most of europe (especially the north) occured nearly 1500 years after the martyrs' death.

The moment you accuse them of bigotry, they fold. That’s the last sin they want to be guilty of, and they’ll go to absurd lengths to prove they aren’t prejudiced. So it’s easy to make them feel guilty even when they’re innocent.

you speak of many unbelievers, but certainly not all.

And guess what…? You atheists aren’t going to enjoy the decline of Protestantism, nor will you enjoy the religious or secular traditions that fill its place. Oh no.

you contradict yourself. the fact is that religiosity will be remain, and yet you imply that 'secular traditions' might fill the vacuum?

fundamentally i think you are attempting to point to historical patterns which you don't fully grasp. perhaps i overstep my bounds as a new commenter, but i have to call a spade a spade here.

(though from other comments i've seen of yours i don't actually disagree as much with your general opinions, but i am nonetheless offended by bad arguments and shaky facts in the service of nobles ends)

Re: Religious debates

razib — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 22:07:03 -0000

note that they did agree on one thing.

Re: India Knight is angry

razib — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 15:19:37 -0000

Especially since July 7, it has become acceptable to say the most ignorant, degrading things about Islam.

saying degrading things about religion is something that we atheists won the right to during the enlightenment. the contempt and opprobrium that secular intellectuals and thinkers (jewish and non-jewish) hurled toward the obscurantism and separatism of the haredi and 'orthodox' jewry of europe is well known. now muslims want insulation from the critique? here in the states it is acceptable to mock inbred fundamentalists. well, muslims are even more inbred (cousin marriage) and fundamentalist than our own kind. there are nations where islam is sacrosanct. they should move to those nations.

Re: The Politics of Representation (pt 2)

razib — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 17:08:29 -0000

well...if was a cultural traditionalist i would understand why such moves are necessary. some jewish leaders here in the states have said that 'a little anti-semitism is good the jews.' as it is, intermarriage rates are nearly 50%, and most of the children are not raised as jews. that being said, even if 'a little' anti-semitism is good for the coherency of the jewish group, it is probably not the ideal for jewish individuals. and there you have it: the more separatism and tension that 'community leaders' can generate the more they seem indispensable as individuals with circle the wagons and form into groups.

Re: Christian and Jewish intolerance

razib — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 14:49:05 -0000

shiva, thanks for the tip, but just so you know i have qualms with 'religious studies' as a scholarly discipline in regards to its methodology. the short of it is that i reject its foundational axioms as i understand them.

Re: Christian and Jewish intolerance

razib — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 20:07:56 -0000

to be clear, i view religion like a climatic system, a force of nature. i don't expect to banish low pressure systems which get out of control anytime soon, but it is important to know how such cyclones manifest themselves in our world so that we may make preparations.

Re: Christian and Jewish intolerance

razib — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 20:00:45 -0000

Razib - I do like your cynical take on religion.

well, i probably sound more cynical than i really am. my only point is that there are many dimensions of religion, and what is true of one axis is not true of another. philosophical religion gets a lot of play because the elites play that game, but it isn't the totality of religion and in fact isn't really how religion is lived. i've read aquinas' summa and other works of philosophical religion and it strikes me as gibberish.

gibberish is important for IT professionals to justify their existence,

as such a professional myself i see the point, but, the difference between theology and other sciences of deduction from axioms is that theology doesn't really have a genuine inferential structure. i would argue that 'theological consensus' is socially mediated and determined, it does not emerge clearly and precisely from a set of distinct axioms. this is explains why theology varies so greatly by the age though the axioms are presumably the same.

Re: Christian and Jewish intolerance

razib — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 18:32:25 -0000

shiva, you said:
the essence of these ideas will forever remain beyond our grasp.

let me be frank: i have read a lot of evolutionary anthropology and cognitive psychology and "higher religions" are, in my opinion, a philosophical gibberish concocted by clerical elites to justify their positions. fundamentally, i believe all religions have the same 'meta-representations' of supernatural agents in their mind's eye. if you read theological incorrectness by d. jason slone you see through his research that therevada buddhism in places like sri lanka can be deocmposed into two stark forms: elite buddhism which is philosophical and often agnostic in regard to theism, and mass buddhism which is operationally theistic.

to make a long story short, i believe

a) most people naturally accept the validity of supernatural agents, no matter the names that they give this agent. only a small % of humans reject this for a variety of reasons, and the cynics, epicureans, carvakas, zunxi, are all manifestations of this counter-trend.

b) philosophical gibberish is important for religious professionals to justify their existence, and the names matter so that different factions can make sure they know who to kill when the killing time is on hand, but really there is not "essence" there.

Re: Christian and Jewish intolerance

razib — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 17:12:12 -0000

according to my reading the big deal with groups like the carvaka was not that they were atheistic, rather, they rejected any validity to dharma.

Re: Christian and Jewish intolerance

razib — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 13:49:47 -0000

sahil, i know quite a bit about religion, and i don't i i don't think atheism can banish religion, nor do i think it is as dogmatic as religion. i do think some definitions of god can be falsified or shown to be incoherent. in any case case, here are posts that give my perspective:

Atheism, Heresy and Hesychasm
The God Delusion - Amongst the unbelievers

Re: Christian and Jewish intolerance

razib — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 03:27:07 -0000

1) cancelling a book showing is not curtailing 'freedom of speech,' as it is the government that is banned from curtailing freedom of speech. i mean, isn't it understood the actions of private and public actors differ?

2) of course israel is held to a higher standard than muslim nations, israel is a western nation (or at least its ashkenazi elite is). western nations are held to higher standards because they're civilized. on the other hand when a muslim nation is reasonably stable like tunisia or egypt we clap loudly because they aren't cutting each other's throats. that's why muslims want to move to western nations and westerners don't want to move to muslims. there is no allure in barbarian lands.

3) dawkins style 'militant atheism' isn't something you really have to worry about. we atheists aren't throwing shit because you gullible religious folk put up pictures of your myriad gods, or mumble your magical-gibberish in public places. your superstitions are your own business, i simply get riled up when muslims bring their pre-1800 perception of the relation between religion and society to the post-1800 west. one of the victories of the enlightenment was to protect the mockery of your great ghosts.

Re: Media stupidity

razib — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 18:41:32 -0000

...brown.

Re: Media stupidity

razib — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 17:30:39 -0000

raz, i resent you for stealing my first syllable :)

Re: Media stupidity

razib — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 15:54:46 -0000

justforfun, just wait. i need to feel out the boundaries of discourse here.

Re: Media stupidity

razib — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 15:45:19 -0000

justforfun, thanks for telling me that the god delusion reigns here. jai didn't warn of that particular primitive streak :)

Re: Media stupidity

razib — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 15:42:13 -0000

Well I thought it was funny.

sure, but it is kind of a mean stereotype which isn't even true and used to mock east asians. dog eating is a dying practice and there is a very aggressive movement to ban it by korean animal rights activists.

i don't mind mean stereotypical jokes, but i assume that it is then acceptable to indulge in the same with brown groups?

Re: Media stupidity

razib — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 14:29:40 -0000

"KOREANS LIKE DOGS"

is this sort of comment acceptable on this blog? i'm not asking in a judgemental or sarcastic manner...just feeling out what i can get away with :)

Re: Media stupidity

razib — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 14:11:43 -0000

ew muslim converts in Iran showed their change of religion by kicking out their dogs and generally treating them as badly as possible whenever they got the chance

my uncle is an imam in the hanafi tradition. he told me, "dogs are good, but keep them far. cats are good, but keep them close." some of my family members have owned dogs, though this is considered unusual.

Re: Media stupidity

razib — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 16:03:25 -0000

hey now, some of the founders are friends of mine in real life! :-)

Re: Media stupidity

razib — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 15:03:48 -0000

me thinks Asians are more integrated and their contributions are more visible in UK rather than US.

of course.

1) south asians are around 1% of america's population
2) they are 4% of britain's population
3) my impression also is that they are somewhat more scattered in the USA than UK (e.g., we have no southall)

but, 'integration' is a word sensitive to metics. for example, if you counted "white friends per capita" which group would you think comes out on top?

Re: Media stupidity

razib — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 14:46:59 -0000

also, here in the states, the vast majority of us were raised in the suburbs amongst whites. we were one of a few brown people (if any) in our high schools (secondary schools, don't know what you guys call them :). there are now large concentrates of brown people in places like new jersey or queens, but when most of us (around 30 in terms of age) were growing up we had to develop on our own. consider that US census data shows that american brown kids who are born in the states, 1.5 (came when very young) have rates of outmarriage on the order of 30-50% (depending on what numbers you believe). this rate might drop as the younger, more numerous, kids grow up and are more culturally brown, but, it is very different than in the UK where the numbers i've seen are less than 10% outmarriage (despite your community being less F.O.B. than ours), with as low as 1-2% for bangladeshis.

Re: Media stupidity

razib — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 14:43:33 -0000

Main difference between SM & PP is that we dont make such a big fuss about being brown and race ‘n stuff… like SM guys tend to do.

yes, that's the impression i get. though, to be fair, one might say that part of that fixation is that brownz in the USofA don't have the social tensions with the mainstream that say, pakistani brownz, do on your side of the pond, so they have to find something to kvetch about. also, in terms of being culturally brown, the USA brown community is really diverse, so i think that there is less of a culture to easily slot into for many (unless you part of a numerous community, like gujarati patels), so they have to create a synthetic identity and they are working them out on blog. my impression is that in the UK there are more clearly defined and natural 'blocks.' e.g., here in the states 88% of brownz are 'indian,' with the other 12% being bangladeshi, pakistani, sri lankan, etc. of that 88% you have many different groups with different experiences.

Re: Media stupidity

razib — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 14:24:31 -0000

p.s. i have relatives who live in the UK. my uncle is a petrol engineer who spends a lot of time in the north sea, so i'm interesting in getting some insights into the lives my cousins lead (i can tell you immediately that the fact that they are not sylheti [we are from comilla] has been an issue in the past).

Re: Media stupidity

razib — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 14:20:43 -0000

thanks for the intro jai!

He’s an ex-Muslim Bangladeshi dude from the US who I know from Sepia Mutiny.

just to be clear here, i have never really believed in god and have been an self-conscious atheist since i was 8 or so. my parents raised me as if i was a muslim, and so i know the general brown muslim culture...but saying 'ex-muslim' might give the wrong impression of how religious i ever was (in other words, i never was religious :) i use the handle 'razib_the_atheist' on SM precisely because people repeatedly assumed i was muslim simply by my handle, and it got tiresome reminding people that i don't identify as muslim in any way. there is also a tendency on SM to 'ethnicize' islam (i.e., you are what you are born, as is normative among many hindus and jews), and i don't accept that for myself (seeing as how i don't, and haven't, ever socialized with muslims outside of my family and don't partake of the subculture).

anyway, i think jai might have introduced me because he has encouraged me to check out this blog (i have dropped in now and then). my main exposure to brown culture is via weblogs as i live in a rural and 95% white area in the states, so i am curious as to the differences between SM & PP (already noted some). ikram saed, a canadian brown guy, has labelled me a combination of an 'alien anthropologist' who is also a 'member of the family.' and i think that's about right. normally i blog about science (genetics), but i have a big interest in history and religion as well as ethnology too.

best
razib ("the atheist")

Re: Media stupidity

razib — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 17:32:50 -0000

the media doesn't shut up about islam because of the context of the radicalism. islamic extremism is a seriously social problem throughout europe, has relevance to foreign policy, and is a worldwide phenomenon. the BNP angle is more narrow-focused so you can't get as much juice out of such stories. a contrast would be reports of 'church burnings' targeting blacks here in the states, they got a lot of attention for a while because there was a history of the KKK and other groups doing such things, though later it was found that most of these were the result of convential arson and the statistical trend was blown out of proportion.

Re: Straw ‘opposes all Muslim veils’

razib — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 16:39:00 -0000

Er….women don’t have their faces covered at home.

yeah.

my own understanding is that non-relative males over the age of 12 is the issue. since muslims accept cousin marriage 'non-relative' can mean cousins, but i don't think most go that far.

Re: Racists in the Sunday Times

razib — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 19:15:03 -0000

Modern educational attainment stats clearly fly in the face of all the rubbish these guys come up with.

you might think it a dodge, but they would almost certainly rebut with the explanatory factor of selection biasing. african immigrants to the USA for example are among the most educated groups in this nation, the reason being that most people who emigrate from african nations are from the elites. similarly, ismaili muslims from uganda might have little in common socioeconomically with muslims from mirpur.

but yes, the numbers in britain do need to be explained, and i suspect that they would point to issues of g loading.

in any case, i'm not here to defend the details of all claims. just to point out that there is variation within the set, from nuts like like brand on toward controversial but respected figures like the late hans eysenck.

Re: Racists in the Sunday Times

razib — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 18:55:06 -0000

Given that the first generation never really studied in this country, how can you even include them in any meaningful comparison of IQ or intelligence. It

the numbers are never going to be perfect. stuff like this is never going to be able to defend itself from super-higher barriers proof or extraction of conflating factors. lynn admits many of the numbers are bad, but he offers that someone needs to collate what we have.

you can make the argument that semi-bad/good numbers are worse than no numbers at all. my only point is that this issue is more complicated that racists vs. non-racists. some of the principals are racists by any definition, some of them probably are not. for many of them it depends on your definition.

many of the vocal psychometricians who promote intergroup IQ differences are nutty, but that is partly a function of the fact that to moot such a taboo topic you also have to be the type of person who is OK with being a total nut (chris brand also writes screeds against 'paedohysteria' and promotes older male + young female relationships).

yes, i am the razib from SM.

Re: Racists in the Sunday Times

razib — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 18:38:46 -0000

Why do Indian girls do the best when Richard Lynn claims that Indians are less intelligent than Europeans?

i think lynn would say that south asians have lower average IQs than northern europeans, but, do note that lynn has attributed the lower performance of south asians in the UK to lack of english language fluency and assimilation in the past. when correcting for assimilative factors lynn suggested that the south asian IQ in the UK might be about the same as white.

Re: http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=517273

razib — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 14:02:01 -0000

Why, yes, he is Barry Milli Vanilli Obama. In this age of suicide bombs it may be a better middle name than Hussein.

Re: Bad Theories that Track Robust Regularities

razib — Sat, 20 Nov 2004 17:57:54 -0000

So what is G tracking if there is no general reasoning capacity?

well, what is "G" is an emergent property of transdomain interactions? let me elaborate, if you read the number sense by stanislaus dehaene you will note he reports that some patients with brain damage have lost the capacity for algebra by not geometry or vice versa. obviousy there is no "math module," but various nodes or domains in the brain that work together to give on a capacity for mathematics. G, like mathematical ability, is distributed normally on a bell curve, this suggests that there are various independent factors that contribute to the full expression of the phentoype. these factors in the genetic sense are various genes who come in allelic flavors. in a neurological sense they are cognitive domains.

so yes, the mind is modular, we do have an analog number sense (infants to rats have a conception of bigger and smaller). but the digital mathematical capacity is an emergent property of the number sense being grafted on to language and visuospatial thinking (to name a few factors). the normal distribution is the result of the fact that people have various levels of fluency in the various module capacities.

anyway, that's my theory.

Re: When Men Were Men and Women Were . . .

razib — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 11:54:16 -0000

"gender essentialism"? who believes that? not will. the problem happens if you think in terms of platonic ideals, but that's not how it works, males & females exist on a distribution. so, the median may be stronger than the median female, but their is overlap in the two distributions. the overlap depends on the trait in question. sometimes it can work in other ways, for example, males & females seem to have the same median IQ, but the male distribution tends to display a greater variance (ie; more male geniuses and more male retards).

the way males are and the way females are, controlling for environment, is contingent upon our environment of evolutionary adaptiveness (EEA). addditionally, within each subgroup, there are evolutionary stable strategies (ESS). the latter means that there might be multiple strategies of "femalesness" and "maleness" (think alpha vs. beta, winner-take-all vs. low-risk-low-gain), though some strategies might be more common than others.

Social femininity seems an elaborate system for the manufacture of statists, social masculinity an elaborate system for the manufacture of militarists. I believe that traditional gender roles became inefficient the moment that education and birth control became cheap and ubiquitous.

keep in mind that for 99% of the existence of h. sapiens, we were hunter gathers. so all this talk of "statists" and "education" and "birth control" (aside from infanticide) is irrelevant in the context of our evolutionary background. natural selection does not select for a libertarian society, it selects for the propogation of genes, because genes perpetuate the next generation. like it or not, feminity and masculinity work for about 100,000 years. doesn't mean it'll work in the future, but we come to the table with some baggage.

Re: When Men Were Men and Women Were . . .

razib — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 11:56:15 -0000

p.s. the only think libertarian about our evolutionary heritage is that it was likely driven by individual/gene selectionism.

Re: When Men Were Men and Women Were . . .

razib — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 13:21:41 -0000

as for will's original comment-it seems a pretty banal assertion of a darwinian tautology. heterosexuality is genetically costly, if you had a population of females who reproduced parthogenetically (virgin birth) vs. an equal number of males+females, given equal conditions the parthogenetic population should outreproduce them. but we don't see that, the vast majority of multicellular life is sexual.

why?

careers in biology have revolved around this question, but the big point is that heterosexuality is not just a construct, it trumps asexual reproduction despite its genetic cost (you don't clone yourself, you children are only 50% you, instead of 100%).

anyway, i think that's what will was getting at, though he correct me.

Re: When Men Were Men and Women Were . . .

razib — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 14:34:27 -0000

sure, social conditioning exists. that's why many societies have rules on how to be a man or woman. there are those who fall outside the averages, whether it be girly men, mannish women, or the biologically intersexed. genetics isn't a deterministic process with perfect fidelity (mutation, drift via sampling), and exactly what is "optimally fit" is controversial (contingent upon social and environmental conditions which might oscillate). nevertheless, there are some broad patterns you can observe about the human species (universals), and in the biological world in general. the strong correlation between a particular gender and sex is one. when you flip the "roles," as in seahorses, where the males take care of the young, you also get reversals in stereotypical behavior (females compete over males, etc.). this isn't magic, or a divine commandment, just a reaction to various darwinian dynamics.

the die is loaded in a particular way for humans. that doesn't imply that is -> ought, but, if you want to get to a particular ought you need to take into account the various is aspects.

Re: When Men Were Men and Women Were . . .

razib — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 16:50:10 -0000

These guys were our ancestors, yet they dressed and acted in ways that, well, would get them beaten up today: Wearing wigs and makeup, lace and silk, even high heels for crying out loud...

this is correct. there are "markers" which differ as a function of time & space. that does not deny human universals.

for example, though there are matrilineal societies, there are, to my knowledge, no matriarchal societies where women take a dominant (as opposed to non-trivial, as in the scythians or some celtic groups) in war. this might be a function of size difference, but also is likely the result in different attitudes toward physical aggression.

some might say that comparing the pink = female & blue = male marker to say the cross-cultural tendency for males to be more aggressive and often take leading temporal roles when social complexity increase to be a trivial observation.

Re: When Men Were Men and Women Were . . .

razib — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 16:53:56 -0000

p.s. the fact that in all populations (to my knowledge) males are larger than females is likely significant. this is not true among gibbons, to give a close genetic relation, where there is size parity. it is not true among many cetaceans, where females are larger. it generally points to intrasex competition because of some level of polygyny (defined as greater reproductive skew among males than females). this has some genetic support.

Re: When Men Were Men and Women Were . . .

razib — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 17:34:52 -0000

but stating as an immutable fact that both sexes need to adhere to traditional gender roles isn't.

did will go from is -> ought though in a general social or legalistic sense? he was speaking of himself and the *majority* of males.

Re: Capitalism and Human Nature

razib — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 12:30:28 -0000

though j.m. smith was notoriously cautious about talking about human beings, because experiments are notoriously difficulty, during the initial "sociobiology" controversy he did lean toward the side of the sociobiologists as opposed to lewontin & gould (despite good relations with lewontin, which he maintained).

w.d. hamilton was pretty open to sociobiological thinking, seeing as he popularized kin selection, and his primary popularizer, richard dawkins, also tends to smile upon evo-psych modes of thinking though he tends to focus on non-human ethology.

so there you have two of the primary thinkers in theoretical evolutionary biology in the last generation, who though castigating excessive extravagence upon sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, did not denegrate the the paradigm out of hand like many.

there are some secondary issues about evo psych, like massive modularity, monomorphism on salient behavorial loci and what not that are disputable, but the project of human nature as opposed to a narrow conception proceeds....

Re: Capitalism and Human Nature

razib — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 13:32:18 -0000

Second, construct an ad hominid argument claiming that this trait or behaviour served some functional need for hunter-gatherers on the veldt.

rich, taking the high ground.

in any case, books like a darwinian left, or ideas like geoff miller's that in the mating mind that "pair bonds" have usually resembled short-medium-term relationships rather than lifelong marriages falsify the contention that evo-psych is just a front to "right wing" politics.

if you have a problem with the spin that will puts on the facts, draw your own inferences from them. the laws of physics are universal, but the machines you construct by considering their implications might have different uses.

Re: Capitalism and Human Nature

razib — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 14:19:28 -0000

in fairness to communitarians, it was until 1970 than biologists themselves turned their back on "group selection" and "for the benefit of the species" type thinking.

Re: Adapting Minds

razib — Mon, 02 May 2005 21:27:46 -0000

Is there some egregious incident Gould was involved with that I've missed out on?

gould had a far bigger rep. with the public than he had within the discipline of evolutionary psychology. ergo, he turned his own personal mole-hills (the perception of genuinely eminent evolutionary biologists* like j.m. smith) into paradigm-shifts (public perception).

* gould seems like a decent paleontologist, and some of his ideas like exaptation probably clarified issues that others left implicit in a novel and precise fashion, but, he wasn't really a revolutionary evolutionary biologist who presented a positive paradigm which others have followed. perhaps d.s. wilson, with is multi-level stuff, is a real example of someone trying to "shake things up" by moving in a different direction instead of turning corrections into the whole story.

Re: Piling on Lakoff

razib — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 14:18:12 -0000

I’m sure he’d hate you Will

he has hated will. but more for his perception that will misunderstands cog sci than the politics. chris to the left of lakoff, but i consider him a 'blog friend' and i am probably to the right of will on many issues (e.g., anti-immigration).

Re: Piling on Lakoff

razib — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 14:18:52 -0000

oh, and when i say that 'will misunderstands cog sci,' it wasn't meant as a slam. just that chris' issues with will didn't have much to do with politics from what i remember.

Re: Piling on Lakoff

razib — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 15:49:44 -0000

my politics are basically Pinker’s

you're a moderate democrat? :)

Re: Piling on Lakoff

razib — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 16:02:58 -0000

well, he says:
2004 vote: Kerry. The reason is reason: Bush uses too little of it. In the war on terror, his administration stints on loose-nuke surveillance while confiscating nail clippers and issuing color-coded duct tape advisories. His restrictions on stem cell research are incoherent, his dismissal of possible climate change inexcusable.

i had a conversation with pinker once, he struck me as a typical milquetoast democrat. but hey, you know what, i know people who are close to pinker. why don't i ask them?

i only bring this up because people keep saying he is a "right winger." i don't think that's accurate.

Re: Piling on Lakoff

razib — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 16:39:37 -0000

cosmides & tooby are right-libertarians, that i know. i have already sent off the email. i'll email you when/if i get an intelligible response.

Re: Sailer on Status

razib — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 00:29:01 -0000

steve sailer is evil! how can you link to him!

Re: Razib!? Not You, Too!

razib — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 19:10:58 -0000

will,

i am not a mohist ;-)

Re: I Dated a Guest Worker

razib — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 03:12:35 -0000

i'm not single...but assume that i was. my attitude toward german au pairs is definitely + depending on how in shape they are....

Re: Aaron Swartz on Free Will

razib — Wed, 28 May 2008 02:04:42 -0000

you're hair's getting long dude. not that there's anything wrong with it. but the pic is gettin' out of date in reflecting your luxuriant locks.

Re: Sex, Culture, and Sarah Palin

razib — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:33:19 -0000

she's just smokin'.

Re: Header

razib — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 22:48:06 -0000

if you are going to rename the blog after yourself why keep it in the flybottle subdirectory? just overwrite the blog you have in your root....

Re: Header

razib — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 00:50:32 -0000

will's head on funny bodies???

Re: Some Reflections on Leiter’s Insult

razib — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 05:23:12 -0000

it's in the scorpion's nature to sting, no? plenty of people have complained about leiter's blog-thuggishness, but does he behave like this in real life? some people at UT told me he was very different in person.

Re: The Lost World

razib — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 05:33:28 -0000

i thought it was a very fine post. in any case, you should interview mr. bramwell on free will. i think it would be quite amusing....

Re: I’m Back

razib — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 03:00:01 -0000

you da man!

Re: The Caveman Roots of Liberal Democracy

razib — Tue, 05 May 2009 16:22:57 -0000

will,

tx for the comment. i would add that i strongly suspect there are frequency dependencies, cultural and genetic, to these dynamics. that is, it may be that the success of strategy A or strategy !A naturally leads to the heightened fitness of its inverse, so that over the long term you just have cyclical dynamics.

Re: The Caveman Roots of Liberal Democracy

razib — Tue, 05 May 2009 16:24:43 -0000

if we find liberal individualism at all compelling, it’s because we already have a taste for it.

left political orientation is strongly correlated with openness in personality.

Re: The Caveman Roots of Liberal Democracy

razib — Tue, 05 May 2009 17:57:17 -0000

Given the plethora of different political beliefs expressed in human history - the vast majority of which have nothing to do with the modern categories of liberal and conservative - do you really think any of them can be hard-wired, even "partly."

yes. read will's post. the absolute position isn't fixed, but the relative position is. in the 3rd century the pagans were conservative by disposition, while the christians felt they were moving onto to 'better things.' in the 21st century it is inverted. i'm pretty sure you're misunderstanding what i'm saying.

Re: The Caveman Roots of Liberal Democracy

razib — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:15:42 -0000

A better comparison would be monozygotic twins who have grown up together vs. raised in different homes. Of course, it's a lot harder to get such a data set.

i think bouchard et al did that. or perhaps they only looked at religious intensity.

craig, you're either stupid or can't read.

Re: Bandwagon du jour

razib — Mon, 13 Jan 2003 19:03:45 -0000

remember when people were getting on LITTLE GREEN FOOTBALLS for the comments that were being posted on its message boards by some persons? smearing that blog because of the message boards was asinine in my opinion. what next? attack blogs where one might sumrise that people might have salacious thoughts? perhaps readers of ANDREW SULLIVAN fantasize about bareback sex-eeewwww....

quote me all you want-i'm sure you can find all you want to 'incriminate' me richard-but don't EVER expect me to go around banning people if they are stating their opinions and avoiding personal attacks. (i have a pretty high tolerance of attacks directed at me-as you might have noticed since you told me take my penis out of [my brain] on my own blog-i tend to ban people only when they attack others on the message board).

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

razib — Tue, 14 Jan 2003 11:32:17 -0000

i'm a libertarian-i don't believe in government coercian or positive eugenics. on the other hand, i believe if given the chance, parents would want super-bright children. IQ probably starts to become meaningless somewhere above 150-so if you assume that group one has IQ 100, and group 2 has IQ 85, group 2 would benifit from genetic engineering to increase IQ.

IQ boosting would be a broad social good. for anyone. it would though ameliorate the possibe differences in aptitudes between different groups.

right now, we assume that ALL GROUPS HAVE EQUAL APTITUDES. the result is that liberals devise new social programs to "uplift" groups to express their potentional. conservatives excoriate underclass social structures and cultures and encourage their own rival social engineering programs (vouchers, enterprise zones, privating public housing). if some aptitudes were genetic on average between groups, then we have an even harder task: identify the points in the genome that effect "g"-general intelligence, and figure out ways to manipulate these segments of the genome (gene therapy).

(btw, snyderman and rothman did a study in 1987 of 1200 intelligence experts, and about half thought that the black-white IQ gap had a genetic component, while 1/5 thought it had no genetic component, with the balance not sure or refused to give answer)

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

razib — Wed, 15 Jan 2003 11:15:29 -0000

i loved mcwhorter's book-and he explains a lot, but a lot of the critics of the book LOSING THE RACE also pointed out that it was heavily anecdotal. the problem is separating the interdependencies between culture & biological predispositions, the two can feed into each other.

as an example, assume two kids with a small difference in academic aptitude. child A does a little better in early elementary school than child B (assume child A is a bit above the mean performance while child B a bit below). these initial differences could be a function of genetic inheritance, but as time goes on, child A pursues school with vigor because they succeed at tasks more easily than average, while child B does not because they get discouraged by the performance discrepancy with the mean. what was initially a small difference, can rapidly magnify to a yawning chasm by the time they are seniors in high school.

the key point is i'm not saying genetics explains everything-but we are biological creatures, and our inherited substrate shouldn't be ignored a priori.

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

razib — Wed, 15 Jan 2003 12:01:00 -0000

i cubbyhole peoples, not people (as in one specific individual)-so in the case of a people, it is that 5% that matters and differentiates the two groups.

also-i talk about evolutionary psychology and behavior genetics sometimes-which is the other 95%, but plenty of others cover these topics (as in the folks at UCSB that you quoted).

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

razib — Wed, 15 Jan 2003 12:13:46 -0000

this article about a FRONTLINE documentary talks in detail about the persistance of the black-white test gap from early childhood onward. it is a sociological fact. the scholars in this case obviously believe there is a strong environmental determinent (probably they assert it accounts for all the discrepancy). nevertheless, the gap does exist.

also, note this:

The gap cannot be easily explained. Contrary to what might be expected, Meredith Phillips and her colleagues suggest in The Black-White Test Score Gap that parents' income differences by themselves have almost no effect on children's test scores. Rather, they urge us to look further back in a child's family tree.

mcwhorter offers the cultural explaination. dinesh d'souza pointed out in END OF RACISM that in california whites that were raised in poverty still scored higher than upper-middle-class black teenagers on the SAT. most of the explainations mooted in public are environmental/cultural, but i find that they are becoming progressively more byzantine without any genetic alternative as a contributory factor. for instance, claude steele's idea of "expectation threat" is very provocative, but i don't understand how expectation threat can occur in all black schools-especially in middle class suburbs of cleveland and chicago that are nearly all black but the students still perform far more poorly than comparable white communities.

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

razib — Thu, 16 Jan 2003 06:21:22 -0000

dude-richard is 1/4 black, to keep asserting this "inferiority" stuff is offensive, at least in his context! i'm sure he doesn't think his relatives are "inferior." why does DIFFERENT have to be inferior? can one NEVER divorce assertions that can be empirically disputed from value judgement? are we always trapped within our ideological & linguistic box? have i jaunted into PoMo land?

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

razib — Thu, 16 Jan 2003 07:40:05 -0000

dude-i'm hung-over.. :) but yeah, that's what i meant

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

razib — Thu, 16 Jan 2003 13:25:50 -0000

"I haven't seen this data, so I'd like for you to share it if you please."

so i provided a link to a PBS site-and you reply:

"Dude, Razib has posted lots of links, primarily from Pioneer Fund lackeys. What I'm looking for is one link to one global study that firmly establishes the alleged low IQ of black-skinned people, so I can rip it apart."

so 1) i didn't link to the pioneer fund, 2) you didn't ask for "global studies," you just changed the goal-post after-the-fact and claimed i didn't satisfy your requirements.

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

razib — Thu, 16 Jan 2003 14:11:24 -0000

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/s...

i embedded it in the world "article" with a tag.

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

razib — Thu, 16 Jan 2003 15:58:39 -0000

of course they don't support my thesis-that there is a genetic component-i was just providing evidence that the test gap is more than just SATs (you asked David for more examples).

and yes, a show like this would never get on PBS if it gave equal time to the likes of jensen & eysenk, so they are pushing and environmental/cultural explaination. there is surely something to that-but i doubt it will be enough to bridge the gap-studies by sandra scarr and linda gottfredsen indicate that transracial adoptees tend to approach their biological parental IQ, not that of their adoptive parents (and not just in between, as they get older, they come closer and closer to the IQ of their biological parent-the studies aren't totally clear cut in supporting either side, but my reading is that they tend to support those who assert SOME genetic component because those who reject it absolutely have a higher standard since they don't accept any sort of compromise in the test gap).

i'm not saying that all the experts agree with me on this-i'm not saying that it is established what the causative reasons are on the level of newtonian mechanics or even evolutionary theory.

i am saying that asserting there might be a genetic component to the black-white IQ difference should not lead someone to a *prima facie* conclusion that the asserter is a racist.

as far as not finding the "genetic causes," intelligence or g is almost certainly a polymorphic trait. tracking down with portions of the genotype effect intelligence is going to be the work of generations-but remember, we haven't found a "language gene," but chomsky's hard-wired theory has been established for a generation now [1].

there isn't a smoking gun, just lots of evidence that points in the same direction. for instance, i'm skeptical that the sub-saharan IQ of 70 is actually accurate, the 20% white gene-load in the african-american population isn't enough to account for the 15 point gap. the lynn-flynn effect has been kicking in throughout the world. yes, "intelligence," or the tests, are somewhat elastic. but just because i cede that doesn't mean that i have to reject ANY genetic component-if you look at national IQs, ALL the african ones are low, not just most, ALL. i don't think they are as low as 70-nutrition, lack of educational stimuli, etc.-being factors, but since they are all in the same range, through a wide swath of cultures and to some extent environs, that indicates there might be an inelastic component. the IQs of american blacks and afro-british are about the same, 85. personally, i am skeptical that the variables of discrimination are exactly the same in the two regions.

nuf for now.

[1] actually, there is some recent work in pinpointing regions of the brain AND genome that have effects on language processing

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

razib — Fri, 17 Jan 2003 12:57:57 -0000

of course they don't support my thesis
Does anyone who's not been supported by the Pioneer Fund?

see the list here (some have PIONEER FUND connections, most do not). also, sandra scarr's transracial adoption studies (the results of which can be interpreted both ways) and army intelligence test data have no relationship to the pioneer fund (the latter seems to indicate that both blacks & whites who are enlisted in the army are more intelligent than the general population-though the gap still exists).

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

razib — Fri, 17 Jan 2003 17:05:15 -0000

the gap should be inelastic if ALL the differences are genetic, not if SOME of them are. i think the evidence is probably pointing to a middle conclusion, that SOME of the gap is genetic, though there might still be room. an extreme conclusion on either side (the gap being all environmental or all genetic) is not compelling to me.

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

razib — Sat, 18 Jan 2003 20:23:54 -0000

richard,

yes, what you are talking about is the genetic diversity of mtDNA and other neutral genes. there are many lineages. but this sort of thing starts become confusing, because what we mean by "diverse" depends on the subset of genes we look at.

for instance, jason is correct that studies of mtDNA or y-chromosome indicate a lot of genetic diversity & a close relationship between the khoisan & non-khoisan peoples of sub-saharan africa-but what about polymorphic traits dependent on genes that DO SOMETHING and so might result in sharp phenotypic divergences between the khoisan and non-khoisan? some of henry harpending's work indicates that the non-junk genes can give us a more detailed adaptive history of a population than the more steady lineage info we are getting now.

also, as far as genetic diversity goes-i would also suspect from what i know of the history & archaelogy that mtDNA & y chromosome diversity would be much greater in the arch of west africa up to igbo-land (i believe the mande speaking region)-while the great swath that stretches eastward toward the indian ocean and down around the rift toward the cap that is "bantu speaking" would be more uniform as it is the result of a more recent demic expansion.

as far as this statement is concerned:
And as to the assertion of yours that "there actually is very little genetic diversity within Africa" I would remind you that African genetic diversity is actually greater than that of any other regional group.

this depends on what sub-set of genes you are looking at. even though africa populations have been relatively stable for longer than other populations, and so developed many mutations that result in many differentiated lineages-it does not follow that they will be simulteanously diverse in physical adaptation.

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

razib — Sat, 18 Jan 2003 20:50:11 -0000

from a private e-mail i just received on non-Pioneer IQ studies:

None of the work by Sandra Scarr, Richard Weinberg and colleagues on the Transracial Adoption Studies were funded by Pioneer. Indeed, no transracial adoption study involving Blacks and Whites has been funded by Pioneer (one on East Asians reviewed by Richard Lynn probably was; the others on East Asian
adoptions by Whites were not).

The great majority of Black-White IQ studies were not funded by Pioneer, including The Bell Curve, or any of the other work by its two authors Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray. The best current review of all that literature, using military, corporate, and higher education samples (N = millions) is

Philip. L. Roth et al., Ethnic Group Differences in Cognitive Ability in Employment and Educational Settings: A Meta-analysis, 54 PERSONNEL PSYCHOL.,
297, 310-14 (2001).

No-one on the Roth et al team were supported by Pioneer.

Only two of the two dozen or more studies of Magnetic Resonance Imaged brain-size/IQ relations showing a 0.40 correlation between brain size and IQ were funded by Pioneer.

The great bulk of work done in behavioral genetics in Intelligence has nothing to do with Pioneer e.g., none of the work done in the Colorado Adoption Project, the Virginia 30,000, the Austrlian Twin Registry, or any of Robert Plomin's work.

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

razib — Sun, 19 Jan 2003 06:59:04 -0000

harmon,

if you're curious why it matters, visit our blog.

a 12.75 point differene would mean about 15% of blacks have higher IQs than the average white (87.25 vs. 100)-that matters.

yes, ultimately we should be judged as individuals, but social policy effects US ALL....

every year the major news journals come out with an article roughly titled "WHY AREN'T THEIR MORE BLACKS IN MATH & SCIENCE?" (with no balancing articles like "WHY AREN'T THEIR MORE WHITES IN PRO-BASKETBALL?" "WHY AREN'T THEIR MORE ASIANS IN ENTERTAINMENT & THE ARTS?"). the implication is that our society must be dysfunctional, and more outreach is necessary to african-americans so that they will enter engineering & science, with are also often hinted to be racist havens. there are also articles that ask, "WHY AREN'T THEIR MORE WOMEN IN MATH & SCIENCE." i think a lot of conservatives would give a mixed biological & social reason for the latter. but they'll not stand to give the same for ethnic minorities, but tend to focus on social pathologies. but, what may be perceieved as social pathologies might be rational adaptations that build on prior social structures influenced by both environment, history & genes.

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

razib — Sun, 19 Jan 2003 23:41:57 -0000

harmon-
1) human biodiversity effects your politics depending on what your politics are-i'm a libertarian by inclination, so it doesn't have that much effect. but most public policy is set by liberals or conservatives in this country-who tend to favor types of social engineering (liberals) or incentives (conservatives) that would be impacted by possible group differences

2) as far as your brilliant assertion that finnish designed IQ tests tend to show finns test well
A) Raven's Marticies
B) amazing how tests designed by WASPs seem to show that asians and jews do very well. better in fact than the WASPs that designed them!

To Richard:

...graduate from university in America, but the IQ tests tell us that males are generally smarter than females, and the male brain is certainly larger than the female brain.

Thomas Sowell says that says that black females have higher IQs.

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

razib — Sun, 19 Jan 2003 23:42:47 -0000

btw, for the record, i'm agnostic on whether higher black female IQs is genetic or environmental/cultural.

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

razib — Mon, 20 Jan 2003 08:01:58 -0000

doubt it. but white females don't have bigger brains and have about the same IQ as while males. and whales have bigger brains....

(i'm assuming that body to brain size ratio matters)

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

razib — Mon, 20 Jan 2003 21:13:18 -0000

last word from me on this thread:

people shouldn't judge on appearences-but they do.

we are all equal before God and/or the law-but are all not all equal.

the greatness of "liberalism" (broad-sense) is that it takes the individual as the basic organizing unit of society and sanctifies it in a way that other societies have sanctified the family (china), corporative body (high medieval europe) or royalty (divine right of kings europe). that being said-in civil society, other levels of organization, religion, ethnos and race, still exist. we don't need to deny those truths even though they have no legal standing.

best
razib

Re: Inbreeding is out, Assimilation is in the American Melting Pot

razib — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:11:44 -0000

What was the Anglican and its many American offshoots policy in regards to the cousin marriages? Does this also explain all the inbreeding jokes about the American South?

they accepted cousin marriage in the anglican church. e.g., charles darwin. the rate of cousin marriage in the south isn't that high. rather

1) the quasi-nobility of the south started practicing it to preserve land, just like in europe

2) isolated mountain communities naturally have a smaller pool of mates