sure that is possible. But in small groups. And that certainly isn't going to be a contributing factor in the US.

JJMt said:

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Small groups can become big groups.

And it will remain a major factor in the U.S. until racial intermarriage becomes more common.

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As I said. The genetic diversity within the black race is way larger than the gap from the average black person to white person. So even without racial intermarriage, blacks will inevitably cross breed with a vastly diverse set of genetics. All selective traits from tribal breeding would be lost for the most part.

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The average African-American genome, for example, is nearly a quarter European, and almost 4% of European Americans carry African ancestry.

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http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/12/genetic-study-reveals-surprising-ancestry-many-americans

AstroAg17 said:

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Everyone borrows ideas. It doesn't mean one isn't an intellectual. If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. Nobody is smart enough to construct a consistent modern philosophy "from scratch" in my opinion.

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That quote was actually just Newton trashing Robert Hooke (who was noticeably short) after his ideas were criticized by the latter.

k2aggie07 said:

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For those interested, this is a really good book on this subject:

The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance by David Epstein

The answer to "is it nature or nurture?" is "....its complicated."

I saw a talk a long time ago given by the late Michael Crichton called Fear, Complexity, and Environmental Management. I found it here. What reminded me of that talk was the statement melanin + = testosterone +. Blacks are darker so they have more testosterone.

Things in nature are rarely linear and genetics is less so.



I've said this a ton on here, but it's a safe statement: ALL models are wrong; some are useful. The question is if the broad posit "human races appear to have observable physical distinctions and these are predictive in value in both personal and macro-cultural interactions" is merely wrong, or if it is useful.

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There are - IIRC - over 150 genes that account for just height. Things in genetics and biochemical pathways are essentially never linear nor simple.

Also, "correlation does not equal causation", anyone?

Wait - you're agreeing with me right? I think you're agreeing with me.

Yeah as a biochemistry major I'm 100% agreeing with you, as well as the poster (idk if it was also you) that refused to accept the "scientific" proof that nincompoop posted. Those papers were all old, or the sample size was too small, or it was just generally sketchy. Glad to see this board isn't completely filled with people incapable of rational thought.

JJMt said:

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I'm not sure that's correct, for a number of reasons. One, genetic diversity isn't the entire story. In addition to genetic diversity, I suspect that which genes are being expressed is another large part of the story (but again, I say that tentatively due to my lack of knowledge of genetics). My crude understanding is that genetic diversity simply means how much genetic information is available, whereas genetic expression is what components of that information are being expressed. Both are largely hereditary, and limits on expression can be passed down, thus limiting physiological diversity, despite the presence of genetic diversity.

And the U.S. black population is not representative of Africa generally. A friend of mine in college who was from Kenya believed quite strongly that most U.S. blacks were from only 2-3 tribes in west Africa due to their appearance. Thus, time may not make the black community within the U.S. much different than it is today, unless interracial marriage becomes much more common.

As an aside, even though my Kenyan friend came from a very accomplished and prominent family, his tribalism would make most racists look tame in comparison.

And, as another aside, noting racial differences doesn't automatically mean racism. The connotation of racism to me means attaching negative judgments to racial differences. However, one can observe racial differences without attaching any judgment to them at all.

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Yeah, I've noticed this a lot with a few Somali friends - they've made offhand comments about African Americans being rooted in a different part of Africa than them.

It's a massive continent. It's ludicrous to think that one end of it is the same as the other.

As a humorous racial aside, I've noticed that the baby name Aryan is becoming really popular among Indians and Pakistanis lately, so maybe we're primed for an era of Subcontinental Nazism.

More on Spencer and the alt-right's misunderstanding of Nietzsche.

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The alt-right is drunk on bad readings of Nietzsche. The Nazis were too.

The alt-right is obsessed with the 19th-century German philosopher. They don't understand him.

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"Christianity is wrong, Christendom is right
In his interview with the Atlantic, Spencer, an avowed atheist, surprised Wood with a peculiar defense of Christianity: that the religion is false but it "bound together the civilizations of Europe."
Spencer's view is common among the alt-right. They have no interest in the teachings of Christ, but they see the whole edifice of white European civilization as built on a framework of Christian beliefs. From their perspective, Christendom united the European continent and forged white identity.
It's a paradox: They believe the West has grown degenerate and weak because it internalized Christian values, but they find themselves defending Christendom because they believe it's the glue that binds European culture together.
Last August, Vox Day, a prominent alt-right thinker (who often cites Nietzsche in his posts), laid out the central tenets of the alt-right in a post titled "What the Alt-Right is." There are a number of revealing points, one of which reads:

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The Alt Right believes Western civilization is the pinnacle of human achievement and supports its three foundational pillars: Christianity, the European nations, and the Graeco-Roman legacy.

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Nietzsche accepted that Christianity was central to the development of Western civilization, but his whole philosophy was focused on convincing people that the West had to move beyond Christianity.
When Nietzsche famously declared that "God is dead," he meant that science and reason had progressed to the point where we could no longer justify belief in God, and that meant that we could no longer justify the values rooted in that belief. So his point was that we had to reckon with a world in which there is no foundation for our highest values.
The alt-right skipped this part of Nietzsche's philosophy. They're tickled by the "death of God" thesis but ignore the implications.
"Nietzsche's argument was that you had to move forward, not fall back onto ethnocentrism," Hugo Drochon, author of Nietzsche's Great Politics, told me. "So in many ways Spencer is stuck in the 'Shadows of God' claiming Christianity is over but trying to find something that will replace it so that we can go on living as if it still existed, rather than trying something new."

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https://www.vox.com/2017/8/17/16140846/nietzsche-richard-spencer-alt-right-nazism

Nietzsche also feared the adoption of ideologies as a replacement for those lost values would lead to bloodshed, and rightfully so given the horrors of the 20th century. Unfortunately, ideologies still dominate most people's sense of right and wrong and don't appear to be going away any time soon.