Does Anyone *Actually* Believe in the Blank Slate?

[DBT]

Like quantum superposition and wave/particle duality, a new born babe is both a blank slate and not a blank slate.

 

[fromderinside]

So when you buy a new car you're an automobile blank slate? Do you really want to start a new category which is basically unreal.

 

[laughing dog]

Oh well, I've long since stopped being surprised when you post idiotic red herrings.

Hard to dispute an expert in posting idiotic red herrings, but you are wrong.

The fact that it's all the taxpayers does not conflict with what I said. We normal humans don't like being made to pay for stuff we disapprove of; the circumstance that others are also made to pay doesn't make us like it any better; and if you understood normal human psychology you wouldn't need to have this explained to you.

Thank you for the imbecilic straw manm. The point was your usual attempt at using a mind-reading explanation failed. Moreover, your point is only valid if you define normal to mean "being made to pay for stuff we disapprove of".
Finally, as usual, even if one grants your tautological explanation as valid, it simply reinforces the point that conservatives want more income inequality. Duh.

And when that happens to normal humans we dislike it.

Again, that is tautological argument.

Normal humans think it's immoral to force others to support you when you have the option of being self-supporting. Duh!

Again, that is valide as a tautology, but not as general observation. A tautology is not a valid argument.

I will try to explain my point more clearly so that you can avoid responding these idiotic tautological burps. When I hear conservative whine about supporting the poor, it is almost always based on the notion that these people do not deserve support either because they made poor choices or got sick or many other excuses - none of which are necessarily connected with a refusal to support oneself.

Furthermore, any decent human being would know that there are poor people who are poor even though they are trying hard to support themselves.

Explaining our political opponents' opinions by projecting onto them our own ideologies' fantasies of them being some sort of alien monsters, in spite of their views being perfectly well explainable as the predictable thought processes of normal human beings, is not a sound method of carrying out social science.

I agree completely. Which makes me wonder
1) why you felt that was relevant, and
2) why do do you it?

 

[Jokodo]

Speciation not only requires time, but genetic isolation.

Well, we've got that. The last time an Irishman and a San had a common ancestor may have been 350,000 years ago. And evolution and natural selection can act rather quickly (in relative terms).

You very clearly misunderstand the paper you quoted.

The last time an Irishman and a San had a common ancestor is almost certainly - no longer than 3500 years ago, most likely about 2000 years ago.

You don't believe it? Well, think about it a bit. If you know humans and their sex drive (and, unfortunately, also what warriors have throughout history done to the women of their defeated enemies, or colonists to the locals), you can be certain that today, 500 years after the Bantu expansion reached their home region, every living San has at least one Bantu Great-great(*20)-grand-parent and more likely thousands.

Another 1000-1500 years before, those Bantus' ancestors lived along the Upper Nile. And you know what's the *one* corridor for population exchange between sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the world for which we *know* it was always open? You probably guessed it, the Nile. (There are other historically corridors such as a coastal one and one across the Red Sea joining Yemen and the Horn of Africa, but for all we know, those might have intermittently slowed down to a trickle or halted.)

On the other end of that corridor, we have a country that was part of the same Roman Empire as England was (Egypt), and sure we can agree that every living Irish person has at least one, and more likely many thousands, of ancestors who lived in England 500-thousand years ago.

Add up those historical facts (and stop attributing to your ancestors more prudishness than they deserve), and the only logical is that every living Irishman and every living San share, as ancestors (at the very least, since there are other corridors I didn't mention), pretty much everyone who lived in what's now Sudan 3000 years ago (and who left any ancestors whatsoever).

I'm not the first to notice this: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02842 (2004 Nature paper)
If you're more the graphical type, a random blogpost by a random guy doing random simulations in Python and posting animated gifs of the output along with the source code: https://panloquens.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/were-all-siberians/

tl;dr: You're wrong. A single Nubian soldier stationed in Britannia is more than it needs to make you wrong.

 

[Jokodo]

<snip>And the notion that the last common ancestor for the Irishman and the San might have been a mere 500 to 3000 years ago could not possibly be correct. Otherwise, there would not be this great disparity between Sub-Saharan Africans and everyone else in regards to Neanderthal admixture.

These two statements have no logical connection.

3000 years are (assuming an average generation span of 25 years) about 120 generations. After 120 generations, you have a hypothetical 2^120 ancestors. Or more accurately, there's 2^120 lines connecting you to one of of your great(*118)-grand-parents, many of which will ovviously end in the same people.
Since the human genome only contains about 2^31 base pairs, so it is strictly a mathematical necessity that at least 89 of those lines are not reflected in your genes not even with a single base pair (in reality much more than that since DNA is inherited in chunks much larger than one base pair).

 

[Jokodo]

Why? I posted the paper about the San and the estimated 350,000 years divergence in this thread.

Divergence doesn't mean what you think it means. It only means that there is a genomic component that is common in the San and rare or unobserved in, say the Irish and which diverged from its counterpart that's common in the Irish 350,000 years ago. It does *not* mean that every San has every splinter of that component.

The more the human genome is reviewed and further ancestral remains examined, the more the date of divergence gets pushed back. Once humans diverged it's not like today where people can fly around and migrate all the want. Human populations were separated geographically and genetically, in some cases, for ~300,000 years. The last common ancestor shared by Europeans and East Asians was 41,000 years ago.

That's again not the last common ancestor, that's the point where the ancestry of those populations becomes indistinguishable -- where every European and every East Asian not only have the same set of ancestors, but on average the same quantitative contribution from each individual in that set.

 

[Jokodo]

Why? I posted the paper about the San and the estimated 350,000 years divergence in this thread.

Divergence doesn't mean what you think it means. It only means that there is a genomic component that is common in the San and rare or unobserved in, say the Irish and which diverged from its counterpart that's common in the Irish 350,000 years ago. It does *not* mean that every San has every splinter of that component.

Or in other words, coming back to 1329227995784915872903807060280344576 different lines connecting you to your (great*118)-grandparents: Since the actual set of ancestors *has* to be much smaller(1) than that number, as that number far exceeds the number of humans who have ever lived (or for that matter, ever will live, even assuming space colonisation), the ancestors can be weighted by how many lines connect you to each of them. The *set* of ancestors that lived 5000 years ago is probably the same for any San and any Irishman -- with the possible exception of Native American admixture that has reached Northern Europe via Siberia but not yet Southern Africa, and even that is doubtful. But their weightings are different: While the average San may have hundreds of nonillion lines connecting him to someone living in Southern Africa at that time, he might only have a few septillion lines connecting him to someone living in Ireland, and vice versa - and both might have mere sixtillion or even quintillion connections to someone living in the Americas or Australia at that time. Since statistically, the weighting in terms of connecting lines roughly corresponds to the amount of genetic material actually inherited from that person, a San today will be on average genetically measurably closer to a person living in Southern Africa 5000 (or even 350,000) years ago than the average member of any other population -- and that's all that the stated time of divergence means. It doesn't even *have* to mean that a living San is closer to a Proto-San living 5000 years ago than to a living Irishman, though in this specific case it may well be so. In much (all?) of Central Europe, for example, people today are more closely related to people living in the Middle East 10000 years ago than to people living in Central Europe 10000 years ago. But the palaeo-European component also survives and thus, we can still talk about a time before 10000 years ago when the European and Middle-Eastern lineages first diverged -- despite the fact that modern European are more Middle Eastern than European by the day's standards.

(1) Even allowing for generation overlap (meaning: your great*118 grandfather through a couple nonillion lines will also be your great*116-grandfather through a few 100 septillion other lines and possibly even your 160*great-grandfather or your 90*greatgrandfather through a few thousand ones

 

[Jokodo]

I didn't say no racial differences exist. I said that the scientific evidence regarding variance tied to genetics lends no support that any differences in those traits between racial groups is genetic. For example, none of the science related genetics and IQ or other cognitive traits lends any support to notions that differences between groups on these traits is at all genetic.

Now you are going too far. Differences between two individual is, at base, genetic. There is not sufficient time nor differences between groups to conclude the differences imply, at base, group genetic differences That is way different from saying that there is no genetic evidence for difference which is what I just read in your post.

There's been plenty of time for human group differences to develop.

Link

Did you even read the abstract of your own link???

"We estimate that all modern-day Khoe-San groups have been influenced by 9-30% admixture from East Africans/Eurasians."

"We estimate that all modern-day Khoe-San groups have been influenced by 9-30% admixture from East Africans/Eurasians."

"We estimate that all modern-day Khoe-San groups have been influenced by 9-30% admixture from East Africans/Eurasians."

"We estimate that all modern-day Khoe-San groups have been influenced by 9-30% admixture from East Africans/Eurasians."

"We estimate that all modern-day Khoe-San groups have been influenced by 9-30% admixture from East Africans/Eurasians."

Do you understand what that means?

It means that every living San has some of both Bantu and European "blood" and that the lower range of bilby's estimate of when the last living ancestor of all Irish and San lived, i.e. 500 years, is likely closer to the truth than the higher limit of 3000 years! It says so in your own source!

 

[Bomb#20]

The last common ancestor shared by Europeans and East Asians was 41,000 years ago.

Abstract
To study the male and female lineages of East Asian and European humans, we have sequenced 25 short tandem repeat markers on 453 Y-chromosomes and collected sequences of 72 complete mitochondrial genomes to construct independent phylogenetic trees for male and female lineages....

Divergence of East Asians and Europeans Estimated Using Male- and Female-Specific Genetic Markers

The fact that the researchers are using male- and female-specific genetic markers -- Y-chromosomes and mitochondrial genomes -- immediately tells you they are not looking at the last common ancestor shared by the two populations. Out of the thousands or perhaps millions of ancestors, they are looking at a sample of two: the father's father's ... father's father, and the mother's mother's ... mother's mother. They are getting no information at all about the father's mother's ... mother's father, or any of the millions of other lines of descent that contain both men and women. But the last common ancestor of East Asians and Europeans could have been Asians' ancestor as a result of any sequence at all of his/her sons or daughters, and their sons or daughters, and so forth; and the same goes for Europeans. The probability that the last common ancestor did his/her ancestor-ing of the two groups either by means of all boys or by means of all girls is negligible. So the 41,000 figure is merely an upper limit -- since we know there was a common ancestor 41,000 years ago, the last one can't be more ancient than that. But it's much more likely that he or she was a lot more recent.

 

[Jokodo]

<snip>And the notion that the last common ancestor for the Irishman and the San might have been a mere 500 to 3000 years ago could not possibly be correct. Otherwise, there would not be this great disparity between Sub-Saharan Africans and everyone else in regards to Neanderthal admixture.

These two statements have no logical connection.

3000 years are (assuming an average generation span of 25 years) about 120 generations. After 120 generations, you have a hypothetical 2^120 ancestors. Or more accurately, there's 2^120 lines connecting you to one of of your great(*118)-grand-parents, many of which will ovviously end in the same people.
Since the human genome only contains about 2^31 base pairs, so it is strictly a mathematical necessity that at least 89 of those lines are not reflected in your genes not even with a single base pair (in reality much more than that since DNA is inherited in chunks much larger than one base pair).

this should of course read "... at least 2^89 of those lines are not reflected in your genes..."

 

[bilby]

The most recent common ancestor of all humans cannot possibly be less recent than the most recent of the most recent patrilineal and matrilineal ancestors, both of which are somewhere around 150,000 years ago, based on Y-Chromosome and Mitochondrial DNA respectively. But given the propensity for a lot of people to move about a great deal, particularly in the last few centuries, it is likely much more recent than either of those. My guess would be somewhere between 500 and 3,000 years ago for the last common ancestor of all humans. The last common ancestor of an Irishman and a San is likely currently alive, and highly unlikely to be more than 200 years ago; The last common ancestor of ALL Irishmen and ALL San is (perhaps) as far back as a few thousand years.

500 years equals at most 25 generations and 20 is more like it. 2^20 = ~1 million. There were a lot more than 1 million people around 500 years ago. Thus 500 is not even possible.

2^25 is ~33 million. Your own mathematics shows that it is possible for 'all humans' - but the question wasn't about all humans; it was about Irishmen and San, who are unlikely to be the most remote pair of human sub-populations in the world on a genetic basis.

Just in the last few hundred years significant numbers of Irishmen served in southern Africa as part of the British Empire.

And of course there was massive genetic mixing between Europe and Africa during the Roman Empire, just a couple of thousand years ago. The Romans had a deliberate policy of stationing troops far from the places where they were recruited, to minimise the support that deserters or rebels could expect from the local population.

 

[Jokodo]

<snip>
Since the human genome only contains about 2^31 base pairs, so it is strictly a mathematical necessity that at least 89 of those lines are not reflected in your genes not even with a single base pair (in reality much more than that since DNA is inherited in chunks much larger than one base pair).

this should of course read "... at least 2^89 of those lines are not reflected in your genes..."

<LowCaffeineError: low levels of blood caffeine detected. Some modules, specifically the math module, may show quirky behavior. To ensure bugfree performance, please install more coffee>

... there have to be, mathematically speaking, at least 2^89 lines of ancestry that leave no genetic footprint not even in the form of a single base pair for every one that does (and in reality much more because DNA is inherited in chunks).

 

[Jokodo]

<snip>[T]he question wasn't about (...) Irishmen and San, who are unlikely to be the most remote pair of human sub-populations in the world on a genetic basis.<snip>

Indeed.

If there are any living Mapuche (Patagonian natives) without a trace of European admixture (doubtful but possible), the most distance pair probably includes them. Who might be on the other end is more of an open question, but their counterpart is more likely to be found in Western Africa than in Southern Africa, as the latter has been the scene of massive and large-scale migrations and concommitant intermixture in the last two millennia (including a much more thorough European colonisation in the last few centuries, but also the Bantu migrations and Arab and Malay trade posts along the Indian Ocean shore before that) -- or possibly in Australia.

And *their* last common ancestor is still unlikely to have lived more than 3500 - 5000 years ago. Neither the Bering Strait nor the Torres Strait, and least of all the Sahara, were absolute barriers in pre-colonial times, though bottlenecks they may have been.

 

[Jokodo]

Another point to note, because the OP talks about natural selection as though it would boost his point: It absolutely doesn't, quite the contrary.

We have a situation where different subpopulations lived and procreated in relative but not absolute isolation -- sufficient isolation for the genomic footprints of different founding populations to be preserved over tens of thousands of years, and at the same time sufficient admixture to ensure that the last common ancestor lived only a few thousand years ago.

In such a situation, it's the neutral genes that will most closely track the original founder populations and thus show most difference: If, say, 90 percent of the ancestry lines of a San today, tracked back 5000 years, lead to someone who also lived in Southern Africa at that time while 90% of the lines from someone in Ireland lead back to someone living in Northeastern Europe, you expect statistically about 90% of their inert DNA to be derived from that population (both numbers are almost certainly too high, but let's go with them). But when we talk about variants that are subject to selection, all bets are off. While a variant with phenotypic effects will skip a subpopulation boundary as frequently as a neutral one, it'll spread much faster and thoroughly once it did.

In other words: Thanks to natural selection, human subpopulations are much more similar than expected from a simple drift+admixture model exactly where it matters most!

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

The implications of evolution and natural selection are that heredity matters an awful lot in determining traits of offspring. Any child shares nearly half her DNA with her mother and nearly the other half with her father....

Actually, technically speaking, each human "individual" is a pool of organisms--to include bugs, microbes etc. The estimated amount of DNA among such organisms is significant.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

...to continue--

the effects of such organisms on human "individual" is also significant to include gut microbes and obesity, IBD, and Crohn's disease; worms and mental health and "IQ." The effects of microbiome are also very recent in science and not fully understood since many variants and even some microbiota are not even known yet. Meanwhile, they can easily mask themselves as hereditary human phenomena and in a sense they are but not part of the human genome generally speaking.

 

[bilby]

Biological systems are (literally) unimaginably complex. Indeed, that's a pretty good working definition of 'life' - Any self replicating chemical system that is too complex for us to easily understand by reference to chemistry alone.

All simplifying assumptions are likely to be wrong almost as often as they are right; and either end of an extreme dichotomy such as "nature v nurture" is almost certainly going to be more wrong than it is right.

 

[Philos]

Folks,

"I fear we are irrevocably who we are from the moment we are born."

From a film by Michelangelo Antonioni.

A.

 

[untermensche]

Folks,

"I fear we are irrevocably who we are from the moment we are born."

From a film by Michelangelo Antonioni.

A.

We are the product of our experiences and choices beginning in the womb.

For example; at birth we have the ability to learn any language.

But the language we speak and think in is totally dependent on experience.

We can choose to learn another.

So there was nothing irrevocable about the language one thinks in or the limits a specific language places upon thinking.

Is one going to have the same thoughts no matter what language they are in?

That would take proving and be very difficult to prove if not impossible.

 

[Trausti]

<snip>[T]he question wasn't about (...) Irishmen and San, who are unlikely to be the most remote pair of human sub-populations in the world on a genetic basis.<snip>

Indeed.

If there are any living Mapuche (Patagonian natives) without a trace of European admixture (doubtful but possible), the most distance pair probably includes them. Who might be on the other end is more of an open question, but their counterpart is more likely to be found in Western Africa than in Southern Africa, as the latter has been the scene of massive and large-scale migrations and concommitant intermixture in the last two millennia (including a much more thorough European colonisation in the last few centuries, but also the Bantu migrations and Arab and Malay trade posts along the Indian Ocean shore before that) -- or possibly in Australia.

And *their* last common ancestor is still unlikely to have lived more than 3500 - 5000 years ago. Neither the Bering Strait nor the Torres Strait, and least of all the Sahara, were absolute barriers in pre-colonial times, though bottlenecks they may have been.

So in your world, Aboriginal Austrians and Pacific Islanders don't exist?