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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31724 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023

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Thanks for the clarification on 'reaction time' v 'choice time', and link to information processing capacity claim and reference. This enables me to explore and talk about something meaningful.

Black and white are broad groupings of different peoples and histories. The causal path of HBD presumably involves homogeneous lineages that develop distinctions as adaptive advantages. If you go to the top level, partly socially constructed level of race, we lose the causal lineage pathway and smear out across more diverse groups and genetics.

The point by point call and response block comment is not my thing - each individual point immediately becomes deep and layered so trying to address multiple in parallel is futile. But the choice reaction time is a good start to dig into. Thanks for an interesting HBD engagement and links.

Black and white are broad groupings of different peoples and histories.

In general, this is the case, and Black people, encompassing San, Pygmies, Bushmen, Ethiopians and West Africans are extremely genetically diverse. Two bushmen are further apart genetically than the average Asian is from a European. That said, when people talk about Black people in this context they generally mean the descendants of West African slaves which are a fairly homogenous group.

White people generally mean Anglo Germans, which again are a fairly tight group. When people point to a difference, they mean the difference between these two groups.

There is very little discussion of HBD here anymore, and I paid little attention when there was discussion. What I did take away from it was that the people involved had extensive theories, and had put in a lot of work.

I do not particularly believe in HBD, mostly because I live in an environment that is very selected so every one of every race seems very similar.

Thanks, good to have testable propositions that can be interrogated.

The other link you sent, the bottom one, is quite interesting. I'm only early in it, but the admixture technique contrasting Pygmy genetics against relative admixtures of an out group is a great idea for an experiment. I think it relies though on the contrast with a homogeneous population so you can distinguish the genes related to an attribute, eg height. Its a technique for identifying genes rather than an empirical rule that would necessarily apply if both groups were genetically more diverse, I imagine information-theoretically or statistically speaking that's a higher bar. But as I say early in the article.

I am somewhat interested in the actual science but I think HBD has a big job to demonstrate itself because of the complexity involved. I prefer to meet humans on an individual basis...

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