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Until the 20th century, most people believed that human varieties were like animal and plant varieties, which can reasonably be expected to display heritable, v
by emgoldstein 11y ago
Until the 20th century, most people believed that human varieties were like animal and plant varieties, which can reasonably be expected to display heritable, variety-specific physical and psychological traits.
This expectation is a prior, or null hypothesis; evidence is required to refute it. For instance, if you claimed that Great Danes are just as good as border collies at herding sheep, you'd have to present evidence to support this claim, which otherwise seems implausible.
Military and political events in the 20th century reversed this burden of proof. The null hypothesis is now that all dogs are equal, at least behaviorally. If you want to claim that Great Danes aren't likely to be good sheepdogs, you have to present evidence showing their inferior performance on herding tasks, and your evidence has to rule out all non-genetic factors. For instance, obviously if your border collies grew up in the sheep pen and your Great Danes didn't, that's a valid non-genetic explanation. It's not especially difficult to raise the bar indefinitely on this test.
Well, okay, we haven't changed our minds about collies, Great Danes and sheep-herding. But we have changed our minds about Ashkenazi Jews, Australian aboriginals, and chess.
The "out of Africa" narrative suggested considerable genetic homogeneity that supported this politically desirable narrative of universal behavioral equality as a null hypothesis. Recent discoveries in the complex history of human DNA have not been favorable to this narrative.
One of the most interesting discoveries is haplogroup A00, a Y chromosome with a divergence time which could be almost 600,000 years ago [1]. This precedes our current use of the species name "Homo sapiens." 23andme now reports estimated Neanderthal ancestry, but to my knowledge they're not telling anyone they have "the erectus chromosome."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_A_(Y-DNA)#A00_.28Perry.27s_Y-chromosome.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_A_(Y-DNA)#A00_.28Pe...
- themgt 11y agoWowzers. If I'm understanding that correctly, there are some people alive today whose last common male ancestor with the rest of humanity was a pre-homo sapien? Sheeeit. And yes, after the eventual upturning this evidence is going to force to occur, I think reflections will admit that many made a conscious/unconscious decision to politicize science to avoid being seen as abetting or enabling the sort of horrific philosophies that resulted in the slavery and genocide of the last hundreds of years, culminating in the holocaust. And so, we lysenkoized science for good intentions and perhaps with good results, but the evidence is beginning to overflow the dam, and I worry that it is soon going to be the time for ... people of a liberal mindset, to get behind the new evidence and find a way to rebuild/salvage the philosophical foundations of legal/cultural equality without the happy simple story at the bottom of it, because if we don't, the door is going to open to the right-wing to use this for their purposes against the left's increasingly strained denials
- meric 11y agoApologies in advance for a religious post. I think it's important I study philosophy as every time our discovery of science advances, our religion takes a step back, taking back its wisdom. We're all different, and yet we will accept many beings can experience life in the same form we can - we see, hear, touch, taste, smell, feel. I think if we don't discriminate between humans & non-humans, then we won't have problems between different varieties of humans. http://www.taoism.net/ttc/complete.htm http://www.taoism.net/ttc/complete.htm When the world knows beauty as beauty, ugliness arises When it knows good as good, evil arises Thus being and non-being produce each other Difficult and easy bring about each other Long and short reveal each other High and low support each other Music and voice harmonize each other Front and back follow each other Therefore the sages: Manage the work of detached actions Conduct the teaching of no words They work with myriad things but do not control They create but do not possess They act but do not presume They succeed but do not dwell on success It is because they do not dwell on success That it never goes away How I understand the "God created man in His own image, in the image of God" saying is: We're all shards of the same universe, each of us representing different facet of that universe. As Carl Sagan once said, "We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself.". So when I'm interacting with someone, or a cat, or a tree, I sometimes feel like I'm seeing one side of, well, One.
- themgt 11y agoThanks. I was avoiding going there but I'm glad you did. I agree the we've used a reductionist human vs. non-human framework as a crutch on which to build equal rights, and avoided the much more difficult questions of what rights/responsibilities we owe to "other" beings. I hope that a genetic blurring of the line of what "human" means will help us to face the deeper philosophical/legal questions of personhood and the value/respect that should be accorded life, sentience, intelligence, empathy. We are all the universe, looking at and building itself ... and what is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good? Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?