4 ms·

I know the facts are the facts, but this is depressing. If this holds, it seems our politics are doomed to tribalism and paternalism in the long run.

by Digory 5y ago

lkrubner 5y ago
There is no connection between biology and politics save for what meanings currently active politically actors attempt to assert. Such assertions are purely for current political advantage, they are not made in any kind of good faith effort to discover the truth.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  >There is no connection between biology and politics Connections between biology and politics: - Municipal water systems have to provide water instead of inert gasses or iron ingots. - Limited human lifespans are directly related to the successor problem of monarchies or dictatorships and are a major reason why democracies are more stable. - Whether or not the public believes what propagandists are saying is determined by what goes on in their brains, which are inscrutable, but undeniably biological. - Minor phenotypical differences are used by troublemakers to start fights, in behaviors ranging from playground mocking, to racism and beyond.
  - josefx 5y ago
    > Limited human lifespans are directly related to the successor problem of monarchies or dictatorships and are a major reason why democracies are more stable. Given how long some monarchies have been around and how quickly some democracies fall to extremism that would actually be interesting to compare.
    - kibwen 5y ago
      > Given how long some monarchies have been around Don't discount survivorship bias. The Japanese monarchy lasted (as a political entity) for 2600 years, but in that time consider how many thousands of other autocracies rose and fell throughout human civilization. It's a bit like pointing at some old, well-preserved houses and saying "they sure made houses to last back in the day", when in fact all the houses from back-in-the-day which were not built to last have long since rotted away, and whose presence cannot attest as a counterexample.
      - est31 5y ago
        Yeah it seems to help that you are on an island. The english monarchy has lasted for around the same order of magnitude.
    - hnbad 5y ago
      "Primitive" societies were likely fairly anarchistic and monarchies probably arose from "war chiefs" with religious justifications (think divine right of kings but before Christianity). Representative democracies are fairly recent. Even popular examples like Rome had very strict ideas about who was eligible to vote and even in the US women and Black people hadn't been allowed to vote for the longest time of its existence. I'm not sure what examples of "falling to extremism" you're thinking of, but to pre-empt the two most obvious ones: Weimar Germany was an extremely young republic and its fall to extremism was initiated by conservatives trying to prevent the rise of communists to avoid losing their wealth after the republic had already weakened their political power; and the Soviet Union pretty much directly followed a violent revolution to overthrow a monarchy and jumped right into military dictatorship while having to fight an enemy hellbent on depopulating most of its territory. Most of the others I can think of are successor states to Soviet republics that either were autocratic already or rapidly turned into kleptocracies after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and only adopted the dressings of democracy prior to falling apart. Also most stable monarchies aren't dictatorial. Chinese dynasties were famously bureaucratic and European monarchies had fairly intricate aristocracies that frequently got involved when it came to less clear-cut lines of succession. It's probably best to think of these as oligarchies, which as a category is probably also a good fit for many so-called democracies.
- mhuffman 5y ago
  >There is no connection between biology and politics save for what meanings currently active politically actors attempt to assert. This is outlandishly untrue! Think about the politics (not "Politics") within your own family. Now extend that out a bit and you have a "tribe" ... and of course that is going to have "political" and "Political" ramifications. And on it goes ... As soon as you get more than one person in a group politics of some sort will emerge. And "natural" groupings have historically been biological.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    I think the point is not that biology is never relevant to politics, but politics isn't inherently based in race. Humans have a huge array of tribal identities and affiliations which cross racial lines. The idea that "natural" groupings are based on race is absurd. Even in the historical context, there are a peletora of examples where personal interest trumps biological alliances and diverse alliances are formed.
    - mhuffman 5y ago
      >I think the point is not that biology is never relevant to politics, but politics isn't inherently based in race. Humans have a huge array of tribal identities and affiliations which cross racial lines. No one said anything about race, but I guess you could consider it implicit historically. However, I could easily see a tribe of people with multiple races, but biologically connected by their genetic relationships. In fact, without looking it up, I would think around the Mediterranean that was common at some time in the past. >The idea that "natural" groupings are based on race is absurd. One, no one specified race. But two, before the rise of empires (and mega-empires) I would defy you to name a single example contrary to that. Before easy transportation, every one local in a society was related one way or another and likely separated from other groups enough for race to count. I don't know how, historically, you can get a more "natural" grouping than that! >Even in the historical context, there are a peletora of examples where personal interest trumps biological alliances and diverse alliances are formed. I would be curious if you can name even one historical example that did not start off with some sort of biological context. All large empires that you can name started off as tribes and eventually grew to incorporate others. Small ones would likely be even more biologically concentrated. Granting that some society can grow and start to incorporate other groupings as you suggest.
dcow 5y ago
If you’re just discovering that race is a social construct and all of our political bickering is better characterized as tribalism.. well.. that’s not news. But reading this article it does appear that there is distinction between some African lineage and essentially everybody else. So maybe there is or was something innately genetic between those two groups? I think the article makes the assertion that modern humans are all the same species.
- hnbad 5y ago
  Just to clarify: as the article points out with the image from Wikipedia, the distinction of "some African lineage and essentially everybody else" (i.e. the small-ish group of Africans most populations outside Africa can be traced back to versus the genetic diversity within Africa) does not follow racial lines in any meaningful way. Not only are modern humans all the same species, but race lacks any biological coherence unless you draw the lines exclusively between Black African populations and lump everybody else in with one of them -- which probably isn't what most "race realists" had in mind.
- Digory 5y ago
  For thousands of years, people said ancestry produced meaningful differences between populations. That 'construct' held that infinitesimal differences in ancestry could be used to divide society. So discrimination based on race was widespread, even while science acknowledged the races were the same species. The 2000 story said race is just a social construct, because we were all from the same origin. Here the science now seems to say there are real, scientific ancestry differences. If not visual, they are easily determined. So, again, we return to a place where we can't say we all have the same origin. It will take some effort to avoid returning to the older paradigm, and I'm not sure we've got the tools to do it.

I know the facts are the facts, but this is depressing. If this holds, it seems our politics are doomed to tribalism and paternalism in the long run.

by Digory 5y ago

I know the facts are the facts, but this is depressing. If this holds, it seems our politics are doomed to tribalism and paternalism in the long run.

lkrubner 5y ago

There is no connection between biology and politics save for what meanings currently active politically actors attempt to assert. Such assertions are purely for current political advantage, they are not made in any kind of good faith effort to discover the truth.

whatshisface 5y ago
>There is no connection between biology and politics Connections between biology and politics: - Municipal water systems have to provide water instead of inert gasses or iron ingots. - Limited human lifespans are directly related to the successor problem of monarchies or dictatorships and are a major reason why democracies are more stable. - Whether or not the public believes what propagandists are saying is determined by what goes on in their brains, which are inscrutable, but undeniably biological. - Minor phenotypical differences are used by troublemakers to start fights, in behaviors ranging from playground mocking, to racism and beyond.
- josefx 5y ago
  > Limited human lifespans are directly related to the successor problem of monarchies or dictatorships and are a major reason why democracies are more stable. Given how long some monarchies have been around and how quickly some democracies fall to extremism that would actually be interesting to compare.
  - kibwen 5y ago
    > Given how long some monarchies have been around Don't discount survivorship bias. The Japanese monarchy lasted (as a political entity) for 2600 years, but in that time consider how many thousands of other autocracies rose and fell throughout human civilization. It's a bit like pointing at some old, well-preserved houses and saying "they sure made houses to last back in the day", when in fact all the houses from back-in-the-day which were not built to last have long since rotted away, and whose presence cannot attest as a counterexample.
    - est31 5y ago
      Yeah it seems to help that you are on an island. The english monarchy has lasted for around the same order of magnitude.
  - hnbad 5y ago
    "Primitive" societies were likely fairly anarchistic and monarchies probably arose from "war chiefs" with religious justifications (think divine right of kings but before Christianity). Representative democracies are fairly recent. Even popular examples like Rome had very strict ideas about who was eligible to vote and even in the US women and Black people hadn't been allowed to vote for the longest time of its existence. I'm not sure what examples of "falling to extremism" you're thinking of, but to pre-empt the two most obvious ones: Weimar Germany was an extremely young republic and its fall to extremism was initiated by conservatives trying to prevent the rise of communists to avoid losing their wealth after the republic had already weakened their political power; and the Soviet Union pretty much directly followed a violent revolution to overthrow a monarchy and jumped right into military dictatorship while having to fight an enemy hellbent on depopulating most of its territory. Most of the others I can think of are successor states to Soviet republics that either were autocratic already or rapidly turned into kleptocracies after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and only adopted the dressings of democracy prior to falling apart. Also most stable monarchies aren't dictatorial. Chinese dynasties were famously bureaucratic and European monarchies had fairly intricate aristocracies that frequently got involved when it came to less clear-cut lines of succession. It's probably best to think of these as oligarchies, which as a category is probably also a good fit for many so-called democracies.
mhuffman 5y ago
>There is no connection between biology and politics save for what meanings currently active politically actors attempt to assert. This is outlandishly untrue! Think about the politics (not "Politics") within your own family. Now extend that out a bit and you have a "tribe" ... and of course that is going to have "political" and "Political" ramifications. And on it goes ... As soon as you get more than one person in a group politics of some sort will emerge. And "natural" groupings have historically been biological.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  I think the point is not that biology is never relevant to politics, but politics isn't inherently based in race. Humans have a huge array of tribal identities and affiliations which cross racial lines. The idea that "natural" groupings are based on race is absurd. Even in the historical context, there are a peletora of examples where personal interest trumps biological alliances and diverse alliances are formed.
  - mhuffman 5y ago
    >I think the point is not that biology is never relevant to politics, but politics isn't inherently based in race. Humans have a huge array of tribal identities and affiliations which cross racial lines. No one said anything about race, but I guess you could consider it implicit historically. However, I could easily see a tribe of people with multiple races, but biologically connected by their genetic relationships. In fact, without looking it up, I would think around the Mediterranean that was common at some time in the past. >The idea that "natural" groupings are based on race is absurd. One, no one specified race. But two, before the rise of empires (and mega-empires) I would defy you to name a single example contrary to that. Before easy transportation, every one local in a society was related one way or another and likely separated from other groups enough for race to count. I don't know how, historically, you can get a more "natural" grouping than that! >Even in the historical context, there are a peletora of examples where personal interest trumps biological alliances and diverse alliances are formed. I would be curious if you can name even one historical example that did not start off with some sort of biological context. All large empires that you can name started off as tribes and eventually grew to incorporate others. Small ones would likely be even more biologically concentrated. Granting that some society can grow and start to incorporate other groupings as you suggest.

dcow 5y ago

If you’re just discovering that race is a social construct and all of our political bickering is better characterized as tribalism.. well.. that’s not news. But reading this article it does appear that there is distinction between some African lineage and essentially everybody else. So maybe there is or was something innately genetic between those two groups? I think the article makes the assertion that modern humans are all the same species.

hnbad 5y ago
Just to clarify: as the article points out with the image from Wikipedia, the distinction of "some African lineage and essentially everybody else" (i.e. the small-ish group of Africans most populations outside Africa can be traced back to versus the genetic diversity within Africa) does not follow racial lines in any meaningful way. Not only are modern humans all the same species, but race lacks any biological coherence unless you draw the lines exclusively between Black African populations and lump everybody else in with one of them -- which probably isn't what most "race realists" had in mind.
Digory 5y ago
For thousands of years, people said ancestry produced meaningful differences between populations. That 'construct' held that infinitesimal differences in ancestry could be used to divide society. So discrimination based on race was widespread, even while science acknowledged the races were the same species. The 2000 story said race is just a social construct, because we were all from the same origin. Here the science now seems to say there are real, scientific ancestry differences. If not visual, they are easily determined. So, again, we return to a place where we can't say we all have the same origin. It will take some effort to avoid returning to the older paradigm, and I'm not sure we've got the tools to do it.