tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post5755329575794794050..comments2024-03-19T02:31:02.140-07:00Comments on Steve Sailer: iSteve: The latest car crash in trendy economics: "The Out of Africa Hypothesis, Human Genetic Diversity, and Comparative Economic Development" by Quamrul Ashraf and Oded GalorUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-68656174367708216832013-06-08T13:40:37.383-07:002013-06-08T13:40:37.383-07:00There is some doubt about the wealthiest countries...There is some doubt about the wealthiest countries a thousand years ago if one uses the metric of somehow normalized dollars per capita per year.<br /> <br />If, on the other hand, one judges the wealth of cultures by the number of people per culture, there are two clear winners, India and China.<br /> <br />The main thing both of them have going for them is a nitrogen-fixing source of protein, varieties of lentils and other beans for the Indian family of cultures, soybean for the Chinese. <br /> <br />-dlj.DavidLJhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04477517602668340521noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-91059003185093823162012-10-17T21:47:47.936-07:002012-10-17T21:47:47.936-07:00There will be confounds on this sort of research, ...There will be confounds on this sort of research, even if they use actual measures of genetic diversity. Successful white societies draw non-Whites, who increase diversity while reducing per capita GDP.robnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-33923228536967456242012-10-13T08:26:55.004-07:002012-10-13T08:26:55.004-07:00"Their critics are pretty silly, but Ashraf a..."Their critics are pretty silly, but Ashraf and Galor screwed up almost exactly the way I figured they did, only maybe even more so: instead of using diversity of junk genes in isolated pre-Columbian tribes like I assumed, they went one step farther and used a measure of migratory distance from the ancient Out of Africa event to come up with a stylized version of how much Out of Africa junk gene diversity there _would_ be if there hadn’t been any post-1492 admixture with Europeans or Africans!"<br /><br />Steve, you might want to double check this. It would obviously be theoretically useless to argue that the United States has developed a strong economy based on genetic diversity as measured before European migration - even to academics. <br /><br />Anonymous above may have a point about the index of diversity being constructed differently from your analysis.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-70446515340899547112012-10-12T21:08:29.557-07:002012-10-12T21:08:29.557-07:00- Not necessarily, Europe in 1200 AD had around a ...<i>- Not necessarily, Europe in 1200 AD had around a GDP per capita of around 800-1000$ in 1990's dollars, while China was around 600$.<br /><br />"British Economic Growth 1270-1870" is the name of the paper where they found this.</i><br /><br />There has been a sustained spurt of historical quantification over the last decade, most of it based on improving and expanding the pioneering work of Angus Maddison (who passed away in 2010). Maddison, an unabashed sinophile, far from finding evidence of historical Chinese economic leadership (at any period) calculated Chinese performance to substantially lag western Europe even during Chinese cultural highpoints. <br /><br />Recent work by Paolo Malanima, undoubtedly one of the biggest names working in historical quantification, recently argued that Maddison underestimated Roman economic performance. According to Malanima, the greatest per capita output before Dutch growth took off in the latter 17th century was achieved by Rome, specifically the Italian part, a level of some $1100-1200 1990 international dollars, with Italy at some $1400. Then followed a decline during the early middle ages throughout Europe, but Italy was very early on able to claw its way back to those levels and exceed them by 1300AD, a level it maintained for the next two hundred years before going into a decline that lasted until the late 19th century. <br /><br />In a nutshell:<br /><br />Near-subsistence agricultural civilization with "low" or non-existent cultural-civilizational attainment: about $400-600 per capita, eg Pre-columbian mesoamerica, iron age eurasian backwaters.<br /><br />Literate agricultural civilization $750-$1300, eg Babylon, Persia, Islamic empires, middle ages Europe (beside Italy). (These levels fluctuated and weren't reached by all.)<br /><br />Going back to human genetic diversity, I rather doubt it will have anything definitive or even important to tell us about historical economic performance, simply because other variables are so much more important. It's only when certain institutions are present and certain ideas pervade society that the population's innate capacity come to the fore. At best, genetics can comment on the likelihood of the right institutions being created and the right ideas dominating, but the attempt to describe economic performance during any historical epoch (when so little was understood about economics, remember) as owing to certain genetic influences is probably flawed at the outset.Silvernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-26602093741276164522012-10-12T13:41:44.374-07:002012-10-12T13:41:44.374-07:00"Before Industrialization, take say 1400, Chi..."Before Industrialization, take say 1400, China was quite uniform, and had the highest standard of living and greatest GDP such as it was. Europe was more genetically diverse (and linguistically, and politically); and was lower than China." - Not necessarily, Europe in 1200 AD had around a GDP per capita of around 800-1000$ in 1990's dollars, while China was around 600$.<br /><br />"British Economic Growth 1270-1870" is the name of the paper where they found this.<br /><br />"The Chinese invented gunpowder, very good for killing people like your enemies, but did nothing with it. " - Here again, they didn't invent it was we know it. Europeans refined gunpowder through the process of corning, which allowed much more powerful gunpowder, made it safer to work with, and made it safer to work with lots of it(which in turn made things a lot more dangerous for everyone else). Had the chinese figured out corning(which I think was originally an agricultural process used in Europe for something) they probably would have used more of the stuff.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-25405855538677785652012-10-12T10:54:24.266-07:002012-10-12T10:54:24.266-07:00Amish?
They have to be fairly homogenous.
Anyw...Amish? <br /><br />They have to be fairly homogenous.<br /><br />Anyway, their genes are worth a look if for nothing more than a benchmark of what actually happens when 2000 people stew in their own juice for 200 years.<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-48321435591618463812012-10-12T10:50:25.797-07:002012-10-12T10:50:25.797-07:00Excellent analysis, Steve.Excellent analysis, Steve.ben tillmannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-84019041289693015172012-10-12T00:10:20.633-07:002012-10-12T00:10:20.633-07:00Prof. Robert Sapolsky of Stanford U has a large se...Prof. Robert Sapolsky of Stanford U has a large series of introductory lectures on Human Behavioral Biology that mention very recent research on genes and behavior, including the fact that 'junk' DNA actually performs all kinds of functions. The lectures are from 2010. Start here:<br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&feature=relmfuOlioOxnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-35002135837029881612012-10-11T22:53:27.448-07:002012-10-11T22:53:27.448-07:00Steve writes: “So, that’s how Bolivia comes out ge...Steve writes: “So, that’s how Bolivia comes out genetically most homogeneous in their study. To you and me, Bolivians may look pretty genetically diverse, with major contributions from Europe and the indigenes, with maybe some African in there in the lowland. But, to Ashraf and Galor, Bolivia _has_ to be the most homogeneous because it’s just about the hardest place to walk to from the Olduvai Gorge. You have to get out of Africa, then you have to get out Siberia, then you have to get past the Panamanian isthmus, then you have to climb high into the Andes. I’m tired just typing all that.”<br /><br />Steve. The index of diversity is constructed differently and it appears to me perfectly appropriate. As the authors states: “Moving to the contemporary period, the analysis, as discussed earlier, constructs an index of genetic diversity at the country level that not only incorporates the expected heterozygosities of the precolonial ancestral populations of contemporary subnational groups, as predicted by the migratory distances of the ancestral populations from East Africa, but also incorporates the pairwise genetic distances between these ancestral populations, as predicted by their pairwise migratory distances. Indeed, the serial founder effect studied by population geneticists not only predicts that expected heterozygosity declines with increasing distance along migratory paths from East Africa but also that the genetic distance between any two populations will be larger the greater the migratory distance between them.”<br /><br />Since genetic diversity among Native Americans is the lowest in the world. It seems likely that Bolivia, having one of the largest representation of amerindians has the lowest level of diversity.”Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-67586746195179908082012-10-11T20:11:05.507-07:002012-10-11T20:11:05.507-07:00A kind of "Eureka complex" has
been too ...A kind of "Eureka complex" has<br />been too much in evidence over the<br />last 30 years or more re human origins and migratory patters. The raw fact is that what we yet need to know dwarfs what we do know and many arrogantly discarded notions need to be brought back-- if held in abeyance. The work of Carleton Coon may be one such element due for humble re-view, if<br />necessarily somewhat re-formed.? Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-48660872243774479772012-10-11T20:09:51.731-07:002012-10-11T20:09:51.731-07:00"But, to Ashraf and Galor, Bolivia _has_ to b...<i>"But, to Ashraf and Galor, Bolivia _has_ to be the most homogeneous because it’s just about the hardest place to walk to from the Olduvai Gorge. You have to get out of Africa, then you have to get out Siberia, then you have to get past the Panamanian isthmus, then you have to climb high into the Andes. I’m tired just typing all that."</i><br /><br />Love it.Kylienoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-86417205964205579142012-10-11T19:53:35.424-07:002012-10-11T19:53:35.424-07:00Also, Steve double-pasted the link to the PC criti...Also, Steve double-pasted the link to the PC critique.TGGPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11017651009634767649noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-24996997854205310612012-10-11T19:49:52.191-07:002012-10-11T19:49:52.191-07:00I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the recent ...I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the recent string of posts at westhunter about how the mutation rate may be higher in Africa, whether due to the sun (as hbd chick suggests) or because of the average age of fathers.TGGPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11017651009634767649noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-52758302129932982062012-10-11T19:19:48.457-07:002012-10-11T19:19:48.457-07:00"Junk DNA, because it's unimportant,"..."Junk DNA, because it's unimportant,"<br /><br />i just posted about this in the nobel prize thread. it has recently been discovered that so called junk DNA actually has a function. it is not useless.<br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBQ5a7mCpMs<br /><br />good luck trying to get the nobel committee to award any kind of prize for this work, though.jodynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-24743883647796302552012-10-11T16:44:44.115-07:002012-10-11T16:44:44.115-07:00People of European background rely too much on gen...People of European background rely too much on genetics. Jews, East and South Asians don't let the predetermined nature of genetics get in the way of them studying for standardized tests among many other things. Some European people seem to think that everything's done with genetics so they don't have to do anything. So what if a large part of what we see in the world today is because of genetics? There still is an environmental impact on human behavior.<br /><br />Whiskey, I don't believe China had the highest standard of living before 1400. I think the pictures of everyday Chinese from the late 1800s and early 1900s was the way it was for the vast majority of Chinese throughout history. Most Chinese were toilers. There only existed a tiny leisure class. Despite what many Western people assume monogamy did not exist in East Asia. Male infidelity was and still is accepted.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-37057385263561402612012-10-11T15:29:13.305-07:002012-10-11T15:29:13.305-07:00And as a follow-up, it is likely the tropical dise...And as a follow-up, it is likely the tropical disease load killed urbanization and the interplay between culture, politics, and natural selection that helped propel more urban (but not too much) NE Asia and Western Europe to the fore. As you noted, Africa pre-modern times was not suited to cities. In places like the ME, cities arose 10,000 years ago, around the time of agriculture (Jericho has been inhabited almost continuously for that long). In places like Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China, terrain and political unity created a God-King/Serf social structure that did not allow (along with widespread slave/serf labor) for innovation.<br /><br />The Greeks created analog computers, and primitive steam engines, and did nothing with them, given labor a plenty and a two-tier, royalty/servant class structure. The Chinese invented gunpowder, very good for killing people like your enemies, but did nothing with it. <br /><br />Labor-short Europe, with independent social classes, plenty of enemies willing to innovate (if you the king did not), adopted gunpowder like crazy, when the Chinese and Japanese did not. Killing off feudalism and the knightly class very shortly. In a way the Samurai would not allow themselves to be destroyed, the Knights certainly were. An army of 20,000 poorly paid peasants trained minimally with arquebuses and cannons beat the best 5,000 knights in the land (who cost maybe three times as much as the peasants did).<br /><br />Genetically I think this speaks to selection for adaptation, in a small population size group under both warring and environmental pressure. And also radically different family formation: no random polygyny or hard polygamy but mostly monogamy -- a feature even Tacitus comments on.Whiskeyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01854764809682029464noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-24774631942256682182012-10-11T15:20:52.455-07:002012-10-11T15:20:52.455-07:00Steve, I am astonished you'd say Junk DNA is j...Steve, I am astonished you'd say Junk DNA is junk when current research says it is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/science/far-from-junk-dna-dark-matter-proves-crucial-to-health.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" rel="nofollow">NOT</a>. Indeed the non-coding DNA controls organ/metabolism function and turns off/on various DNA codes themselves. So its hardly junk.<br /><br />Diverse genes are not themselves predictive. Humans migrated out of Africa because it was an unpleasant place to live, full of disease, existing humans, and subject to droughts. <br /><br />Before Industrialization, take say 1400, China was quite uniform, and had the highest standard of living and greatest GDP such as it was. Europe was more genetically diverse (and linguistically, and politically); and was lower than China. If you then look at industrialization, some places (England, France, and Germany) did well, others less well (Italy and Spain) and others almost non-existent (Russia, the Ottoman Sultanate). Japan industrialized, China did not. <br /><br />Politics, culture, individual "great men" for good or ill, all come into play. <br /><br />Genetics can tell you what obviously does not work: highly diverse genetic makeup. At no time or place has that been a recipe for social success. But the thesis itself (middle-ground genetic diversity is the best) is disproven by Iceland. Iceland is as mono-racial and least genetic diverse as possible, and is much richer than Bolivia despite lacking much in the way of resources, compared to say Bolivia.Whiskeyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01854764809682029464noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-75774680881319254672012-10-11T15:14:20.244-07:002012-10-11T15:14:20.244-07:00eh, didn't australian scientists just recently...eh, didn't australian scientists just recently complete a 100 year long study into the genes of the aboriginies, and found, using year 2012 lab equipment on year 1912 genetic samples, that aborigines have an unbroken, undiluted genetic history of "pure" aboriginal genes going back 50,000 years?<br /><br />that is to say, all evidence we have from the field of biology suggests that once aboriginies were on australia, they alone occupied the continent for millenia, with no outside humans coming in or having sex with any of them, at all, whatsoever.<br /><br />during this time, they developed almost nothing, which is what the evidence from archaeologists, geologists, and anthropologists suggests. so the most genetically isolated group scientists have ever found, are probably the least accomplished.<br /><br />meanwhile, the koreans, who are some of the most insular people who have ever existed, are over 99% korean and even less genetically diverse than the japanese and han chinese. they have developed a modern technological society in south korea in only 50 years, mainly by copying western europeans. most peoples of the world do not even show this ability - to simply emulate what the western europeans are doing. australian abos are in direct contact with western europeans daily and have been for the last 200 years, yet show no signs of even minor emulation.<br /><br />these hypotheses from economists just don't wash.jodynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-73463491249686795212012-10-11T14:57:58.975-07:002012-10-11T14:57:58.975-07:00Atleast they are looking at genes to try to assign...Atleast they are looking at genes to try to assign a cause to human differences.<br /><br />Still their hypothesis is testable, certain groups in South America share both the too diverse african junk genes, and the not diverse enough injun genes correct? Those areas must rock economically speaking, they've even been around longer than America has.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-49524369121210851022012-10-11T14:26:41.206-07:002012-10-11T14:26:41.206-07:00Nobody's commented on the HBD aspect of this y...Nobody's commented on the HBD aspect of this yet? You've got an Arab and an Israeli against legions of American Jews.<br /><br />Actually fits what I've observed about the political stances of Israelis and American Jews, actually.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-30187625626527313122012-10-11T13:34:26.150-07:002012-10-11T13:34:26.150-07:00It's all a load of toffee from people who don&...It's all a load of toffee from people who don't know what they are talking about (literally).<br /> Scientifically, this paper should be treated with the same contempt as any of the tosh emanating from 'young earth creationists' or similar charlatans.<br /> For starters, the many peoples of Europe are amongst the least diverse peoples on earth - as they all cluster very close together genetically.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-81082654430418439692012-10-11T13:29:23.872-07:002012-10-11T13:29:23.872-07:00@steve - "...that the old saw about how Afric...@steve - <i>"...that the old saw about how Africans are the most genetically diverse is really meaningful...."</i><br /><br />maybe it is meaningful, but just (or partly) as an indicator that a large part of africa <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8115464.stm" rel="nofollow">straddles the equator?</a>hbd chickhttp://hbdchick.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-39726620751015251652012-10-11T13:26:18.719-07:002012-10-11T13:26:18.719-07:00There is no such thing as junk DNA. Every strand ...There is no such thing as junk DNA. Every strand has a purpose.Truthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17286755693955361308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-56094224712062544952012-10-11T13:12:34.823-07:002012-10-11T13:12:34.823-07:00What all those mainstream researchers are in need ...What all those mainstream researchers are in need of is <i>logic</i>, pure and simple.Natréphttp://analyseeconomique.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-82245961051912860532012-10-11T13:01:22.154-07:002012-10-11T13:01:22.154-07:00obviously there's more COGNITIVE diversity (i....<i>obviously there's more COGNITIVE diversity (i.e., larger standard deviations) in whites than in blacks</i><br /><br />I'm not convinced that's the case. The higher SD in whites has not consistently been found (I've seen studies showing the opposite) and the quality of the racial sampling used in IQ testing is not sufficient to draw such a conclusion. Also there are floor effects on IQ tests (not enough easy questions) that artificially limit the variability of black IQ at the low end thus spuriously shrinking the SD. <br /><br />Also blacks in America are not a representative sample of the entire black race.<br /><br /><br />Another reason to doubt a small SD is that a dark skinned black scored an IQ of 200 (though this was on the old Binet ratio IQ scale which was notoriously for producing absurdly high scores)The Legendary Lindanoreply@blogger.com