[lit-ideas] Re: On misunderstandings and dialogue
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 20 May 2014 13:31:22 -0700
For the record, agriculture originated about 12,000 years ago, resulting in an
increase in the intelligence of the farmers who engaged in it. Everyone else
was a hunter-gatherer. The farmers won out. Later there were some herders who
fought with the farmers, but in the long run the farmers won out over them as
well. There weren’t any Ashkinazis 12,000 years ago, but the Ashkinazis like
all the rest of us descended from those farmers. That is the only connection
I’m aware of.
But Cochran and Harpending seek other examples of evolutionary increases in
intelligence and find, “the Askinazis” which were in relative isolation for
about the last 800 years.
In regard to which argument best presupposes “Intelligent Design,” it seems to
me the one that says man has remained unchanged for the last 100,000 years,
thus, there is nothing new under the son, there is no temptation that will be
visited upon thee that is not visited upon others, and we have all sinned and
fallen short of the glory of God.
On the other hand, if we are evolving – and Harpending and Cochran probably
would disapprove of that word since “evolving” may infer or connote upward
improvement. But they do say some percentage of mutations appear in each
person’s DNA. Most of it is junk DNA. Of the rest, most is harmful. Very
little introduces a brand-new benefit. They discuss the ways in which such a
benefit can spread to the rest of a given social group, but I didn’t get into
that. Of course “Intelligent Design” ought to be able to work with that
scenario as well, but the ones I’ve debated would reject that scenario. And
then there are those who don’t get caught up in the debate and say that however
God did it is good enough for them.
I read Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1959, 100 years after it was published.
My thinking has probably evolved a bit since then, but that isn’t what Cochran
and Harpending are talking about either.
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Omar Kusturica
Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2014 10:03 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: On misunderstandings and dialogue
Well, actually the Ashkenazis were prohibited from engaging in agriculture in
most medieval European states (with the exception of Poland, where they
remained generally rather poor), so how does fit the thesis of the superior
mental abilities of agriculturalists ?
O.K.
On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 6:22 PM, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Cochran and Harpending in the early part of their book argue rather
convincingly that the adaptation of agriculture about 10,000 years ago affected
mental abilities. The traditional view is that there has been no change in
mental capabilities for the last 100,000 years or so. As a result of the
discoveries being made in genetics in the past 10 or 15 years, that assertion
has been weakened. The Ashkenazi argument is to bolster the more substantial
argument that mental capabilities are as subject to evolutionary effects as
physical ones.
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Donal McEvoy
Sent: Monday, May 19, 2014 1:45 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: On misunderstandings and dialogue
>As to the idea that the Ashkenazis genetic difference being resistance to a
>disease, the happy side-effect being increased intelligence, Cochran and
>Harpending write, “. . . we think that most of the characteristic Ashkenazi
>mutations are not defenses against infectious disease. One reason is that
>these mutations do not exist in neighboring populations—often literally people
>living across the street—that must have been exposed to very similar diseases.
>Instead, we think that the Ashkenazi mutations have something to do with
>Ashkenazi intelligence, and that they arose because of the unique
>natural-selection pressures the members of this group faced in their role as
>financiers in the European Middle Ages.”>
This seems suspect on a number of levels, that no "synecdoche" can answer:
1) Conscious intelligence is a World 2 affair: it is not part of Darwinian
theory that this World 2 can act causally downwards so as to cause "mutations"
- on the contrary, this posits a kind of "Intelligent Design" argument writ
small into human consciousness. To be clear: it is consistent with Darwinism
that mental events may operate on the body via the brain but not that they may
operate to direct physical "mutations".
2) That "mutations" do not occur in "neighbouring populations" is no argument
that therefore the "mutations" are not a response to "very similar diseases"
faced by "neighbouring populations": the question is whether the "neighbouring
populations" interbreed - if they do not, there is no reason a "mutation"
within one population might spread within only that one population, though its
favourability is due to being a response to "very similar diseases" faced by a
second population: it will not spread within that second population because the
second population does not interbreed with the first.
Or have I missed something?
Dnl
Simple-minded Darwinist
Ldn
On Monday, 12 May 2014, 19:53, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
You might not like Cochran and Harpending’s book. They base their arguments
around recent studies in genetics; so their emphasis is not upon “tradition”
other than to point out cases where genetic analyses do not support it. They
probably don’t cover material in a form you would like. In places where you
would like a one to one counter of traditional views, they probably just
summarize their points making them susceptible to quibbles.
“In the case of the Jews they write, “Admixture has not kept the Ashkenazim
from becoming genetically distinct. Even if a population starts out as a
mixture of two peoples, as in this case, becoming endogamous (ending
intermarriage) and staying so for a long time ensures that the population will
become homogeneous. If the population’s ancestry is 60 percent Middle Eastern
and 40 percent European, for example, a few dozen generations of endogamy will
result in a population in which each individual’s ancestry is quite close to 60
percent Middle Eastern and 40 percent European. In other words, you eventually
get a population that has a flavor all its own—even more so if it experiences
special selective pressures.
“This means that if you look at the most informative parts of the genome, you
can tell whether a certain individual is Ashkenazi (as opposed to, say, a
non-Jewish Italian, Greek, or German) just about every time, particularly if
all his or her recent ancestors are Jewish. In the plot, the circles represent
Ashkenazi Jewish individuals, but the shaded circles represent individuals
whose grandparents were all Ashkenazi Jews as well. That distinction matters,
because Jews haven’t been nearly as endogamous over the past century as they
were during the Middle Ages.
“Could these same methods distinguish the Ashkenazi from other Jewish groups,
such as Moroccan Jews or Yemeni Jews? The answer is almost certainly yes.
Although that particular measurement has not yet been made, it should be easy
to make that distinction because the genetic distance between Ashkenazi Jews
and Yemeni Jews is considerably larger than that between Ashkenazi Jews and
Western Europeans.
“Further down Cochran and Harpending write, “It is noteworthy that
non-Ashkenazi Jews do not have high average IQ scores. Nor are they
overrepresented in cognitively demanding fields like medicine, law, and
academics. In Israel, Ashkenazi Jews, on average, score 14 points higher than
Oriental Jews, almost a full standard deviation, which is 15 or 16 points on
most IQ tests.37 That difference means that the average non-Ashkenazi Jew in
Israel would have an IQ score that would be at the 20th percentile among the
Ashkenazim. Academic accomplishment in the two groups seems to vary in the same
way, even among those born and raised in Israel: Third-generation Ashkenazi
Jews in Israel are 2.5 to 3 times more likely to have graduated from college
than third-generation Mizrahi Jews, for example (the ancestors of the Mizrahim
moved to Israel from Asia and North Africa).”
As to the idea that the Ashkenazis genetic difference being resistance to a
disease, the happy side-effect being increased intelligence, Cochran and
Harpending write, “. . . we think that most of the characteristic Ashkenazi
mutations are not defenses against infectious disease. One reason is that these
mutations do not exist in neighboring populations—often literally people living
across the street—that must have been exposed to very similar diseases.
Instead, we think that the Ashkenazi mutations have something to do with
Ashkenazi intelligence, and that they arose because of the unique
natural-selection pressures the members of this group faced in their role as
financiers in the European Middle Ages.”
[Cochran, Gregory; Henry Harpending (2009-01-27). The 10,000 Year Explosion:
How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution (p. 205-217). Basic Books. Kindle
Edition.]
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Omar Kusturica
Sent: Monday, May 12, 2014 9:50 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: On misunderstandings and dialogue
Well again, the 'traditional view' holds that the Jews in the Ottoman Empire,
far from being permitted to do only manual work, played a key role in its
foreign trade. A few links below.
https://jewishhistory.research.wesleyan.edu/i-jewish-population/5-ottoman-empire/
http://books.google.me/books?
http://sephardichorizons.org/Volume1/Issue3/SecondGoldenAge.html
id=ScsUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA129&lpg=PA129&dq=jewish+merchants+in+ottoman+empire&source=bl&ots=yE9HYC1Kxc&sig=1iqZBsT5qF2hdN5TzM2IoVQkmgA&hl=en&sa=
On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 7:13 AM, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Yes, but I didn’t quite know how to reply to this since you were presenting the
traditional point of view while Cochran and Harpending are drawing conclusions
based on recent studies based upon the human genome and arguing new points of
view. Perhaps I put it poorly, but at some point Cortez put about 500 troops
on the ground. Not everyone available came ashore. I didn’t mean to imply
that 500 was all he had throughout his entire military career. Cochran and
Harpending clearly don’t imply that. But had it not been that disease
destroyed about 90% of the Amerindians during the period that Cortez was
working, he (in the opinion of Cochran and Harpending) would not have
succeeded. They mention one critical battle where the Amerindians opposing
Cortez were largely sick, but there were probably others.
The traditional view is to credit Cortez cleverness and not to think disease
played a critical role. I believe Cochran and Harpending have argued that the
traditional view does not adequately explain these events. Viruses and
bacteria deserve more credit than they’ve received.
I can see that my brief examples haven’t done justice to Cochran and
Harpending’s arguments but I don’t feel up to going into much more detail than
I already have – especially since their book seems one argument after another.
In another case, I had written that it was easier for colonist to settle North
America because disease had wiped out most of the Amerindians. North American
was empty. I thought I wrote enough to mean “empty” as compared to “India” for
example.
In another case I wrote that the Ashkenazi Jews working as money lenders
developed skills that gave rise to Einstein, but I intended “money lenders” as
a synecdoche. Medieval states didn’t need that many money-lenders. Ashkenazis
did other things as well. Cochran and Harpending refer to the Ashkenazis as
being the “white collar workers of the medieval world.”
Jews were treated better in Muslim dominated areas during the period the
Ashkenazis were coming into their own, but those Jews were only permitted to do
menial work. And today in Israel the difference in potential, between
Ashkenazi Jews and Jews from Muslim countries is marked. The latter apparently
are not competent to take on the more complicated work. They do menial work in
Israel just as they did in Muslim lands. I’m sure there are exceptions.
Lawrence
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