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You reminded me of this Sam Harris tweet https://twitter.com/samharrisorg/status/429007702803492865 https://twitter.com/samharrisorg/status/429007702803492865

• defen 7y ago
  Poorly-aged tweet - in Who We Are and How We Got Here Robert Reich talks about the strong evidence for the existence of a "ghost population" that interbred only with the ancestors of modern sub-Saharan Africans. It's a ghost because we don't have any physical remains like we do with Neanderthals and Denisovans, but there is an ancient genetic signature that exists only in that population. More generally - because people use motivated reasoning, you could just as easily spin the Neanderthal finding the opposite way. "Neanderthal ancestry is a secret superpower that makes Asian and European people special!" or whatever. Once you have your conclusion, you can spin the facts to fit your narrative.