8 ms·

The part that blows my mind is that according to this article, the idea that we evolved in a straight line was an attempt at fighting nazi propaganda about infe

by Swizec 5y ago

The part that blows my mind is that according to this article, the idea that we evolved in a straight line was an attempt at fighting nazi propaganda about inferior races. Before ww2, the scientific consensus was that we evolved in a branching species rich manner, same as any other animal. By 1963 it was again okay to talk about multiple hominid species, so the scientific consensus started moving back in that direction. I find this fascinating because I never realized science could be so political. More interestingly still, when the author talks about species being mis-identified as homo sapiens despite stark morphological differences and that they probably represent an extinct close relative, that gave me a funny gut feeling. Felt like dangerous territory to talk about … Fascinating

tomrod 5y ago
The history of taboo thought in science is indeed fascinating. What seems sort of funny is that now that the existence for potential taboo censoring has been recognized, in recent decades there are several charlatans, conspiracy-mongers, or other ideologues who paint themselves as subject to scientific taboo despite "being accurate" in their own minds. The pendulum has swung towards over-acceptance of claims.
avgcorrection 5y ago
> I find this fascinating because I never realized science could be so political. Surely we already know that there was research (whatever its quality or rigor) back pre-WWII that was supposed to defend racist theories. And that’s political. So I don’t understand why we would be surprised that there was a (political) backlash once millions ended up dying in part because of that kind of research.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rosmax_1337 5y ago
This is very dangerous territory indeed. Arguably the most taboo field in science right now. Sadly.
- Causality1 5y ago
  Frankly I think we're quite lucky we're not a more diverse species. There's no biological reason a human subspecies couldn't have gotten isolated in a valley somewhere and ended up being fifty IQ points smarter or dumber than the rest of humanity. Same goes for our sexes being identically intellectually capable. Would the principle of egalitarianism have ever emerged in such a world?
  - avgcorrection 5y ago
    We wouldn’t want a world where IQ fetishists were to be even more discriminatory against people with lower IQs. (Or supposedly lower IQs.) It’s bad enough as things currently stand.
    - foobiekr 5y ago
      What if it cured cancer and HIV?
      - avgcorrection 5y ago
        No.
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    > There's no biological reason a human subspecies couldn't have gotten isolated in a valley somewhere and ended up being fifty IQ points smarter or dumber than the rest of humanity. Same goes for our sexes being identically intellectually capable. Would the principle of egalitarianism have ever emerged in such a world? I want to say yes, because how are you even distinguishing that world from this one? There exist humans who are fifty IQ points smarter or dumber than other humans who also exist. The batshit crazy idea is that these differences are caused by or intrinsically bound with skin color. As for sex differences, here's the money quote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligenc... > All or most of the major tests commonly used to measure intelligence have been constructed so that there are no overall score differences between males and females. We believe in egalitarianism, therefore IQ tests that show a sex difference are wrong, therefore we use IQ tests that show no sex difference. Now, if there are biological differences between the sexes, they could not only go either way, they could go both ways. It's possible that on average women are better at X and men are better at Y, so you could really design a test to show whatever result you want. It's also obviously the case that no matter what the averages are, the world's highest-scoring male will almost certainly have a better score than the world's lowest-scoring female and vice versa. So arguments of the form "women can't do X" are stupid even if you can find a statistically significant difference in the averages using some metric. Because most people are not exactly average. Discrimination is the assumption that all members of a group are the same.
maxerickson 5y ago
Keep in mind that species is a human concept and not some natural law.
- tomca32 5y ago
  Is it? I always thought that species is defined as a group that can have fertile offspring. Horse and donkey, for example are not the same species because their offspring, a mule, is not fertile.
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    You get the occasional fertile mule!
    - tomca32 5y ago
      Oh interesting. I had no idea
      - tsimionescu 5y ago
        Theoretically that wouldn't be a killer issue, since fertile mules are extremely rare, so you could refine the definition to say "is very very likely to produce fertile offspring" (while horses and donkeys breeding is not). The bigger problem are things that have massive morphological differences but can still successfully interbreed, such as dogs, coyotes and wolves. They produce fertile hybrids and there is good evidence that this occasionally happens in the wild, but nevertheless it is rare and they have clear, stable morphological distinctions, even in areas where they overlap. Even worse, that definition is entirely useless for paleontology, as it is impossible to know if two individuals species could even interbreed, nevermind knowing if their offspring would be fertile. Even modern genetic evidence (which is extremely rare for fossils anyway) is very open to interpretation on the matter of potential interbreeding ("Neanderthal" genes in modern humans could more or less as easily be common genes older than both H. Sapiens and Neanderthals - we have far too little evidence to be sure, and no chance of genetic material from an older ancestor).
nerdponx 5y ago
This reminds me of how the scientific community has attempted to handle the public image of climate change or Covid-19.
pessimizer 5y ago
> Before ww2, the scientific consensus was that we evolved in a branching species rich manner, same as any other animal. This was a time referred to as the "nadir of race relations" in the US, and if you read the output about humans as a species from that period, you'd be a lot less impressed. It's all out of copyright and a lot is available online. It's not what most of us would look at as science, now. It's more like mythmaking.
- geofft 5y ago
  Also, take a look at the history of eugenics, which was seen in the years before World War II as a legitimate and noble scientific goal - to improve the human species by the application of science and engineering, no more immoral than breeding hardy tomatoes or fast horses. Many countries that joined the war on the side of the Allies had significant scientific, governmental, and public support for eugenics (the US and the UK had a Eugenics Society, Canada had provincial Eugenics Boards in Alberta and British Columbia, etc.). Neutral Sweden had an active eugenic sterilization program. So, the "scientific consensus" of that era involved a number of scientists from many countries who agreed with policies and goals that, in retrospect, we now see as not only politically partisan but also specifically aligned with Nazi political ends.
  - cedilla 5y ago
    Yes, a lot of scientists believed in hateful pseudoscience like scientific racism, eugenics and phrenology. Your argument is a very common one but very flawed. Antisemitism, ultranationalism and eugenics aren't bad because the Nazis did it. It's exactly the other way round! Eugenics are just as flawed and criminal when a Swedish doctor or a British politician advocate for it.
    - geofft 5y ago
      I think you're misunderstanding my point - I'm saying that eugenics was bad at the time, even before the Nazis implemented it at horrifying scale, but the scientific consensus of the time was that eugenics was a perfectly reasonable thing to work on, and therefore we should not trust the scientific consensus of the time. If the scientists of that era said that certain humans were an inferior species to Homo sapiens, and the scientists after World War II said that's not true, we shouldn't assume that the pre-war view was pure untainted science and the post-war one was the result of overcorrecting for political/moral reasons - we should consider the possibility that the pre-war scientific consensus was tainted by political/moral views that we now rightly reject.
mcguire 5y ago
Note: He is asserting that this fellow: https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-neanderthalensis https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/h... is an example of "stark morphological differences". I have that funny gut feeling, too; I suspect he's more than half-way to deciding that modern races are actually separate species.

by Swizec 5y ago

tomrod 5y ago

The history of taboo thought in science is indeed fascinating. What seems sort of funny is that now that the existence for potential taboo censoring has been recognized, in recent decades there are several charlatans, conspiracy-mongers, or other ideologues who paint themselves as subject to scientific taboo despite "being accurate" in their own minds. The pendulum has swung towards over-acceptance of claims.

avgcorrection 5y ago

> I find this fascinating because I never realized science could be so political. Surely we already know that there was research (whatever its quality or rigor) back pre-WWII that was supposed to defend racist theories. And that’s political. So I don’t understand why we would be surprised that there was a (political) backlash once millions ended up dying in part because of that kind of research.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rosmax_1337 5y ago

This is very dangerous territory indeed. Arguably the most taboo field in science right now. Sadly.

Causality1 5y ago
Frankly I think we're quite lucky we're not a more diverse species. There's no biological reason a human subspecies couldn't have gotten isolated in a valley somewhere and ended up being fifty IQ points smarter or dumber than the rest of humanity. Same goes for our sexes being identically intellectually capable. Would the principle of egalitarianism have ever emerged in such a world?
- avgcorrection 5y ago
  We wouldn’t want a world where IQ fetishists were to be even more discriminatory against people with lower IQs. (Or supposedly lower IQs.) It’s bad enough as things currently stand.
  - foobiekr 5y ago
    What if it cured cancer and HIV?
    - avgcorrection 5y ago
      No.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  > There's no biological reason a human subspecies couldn't have gotten isolated in a valley somewhere and ended up being fifty IQ points smarter or dumber than the rest of humanity. Same goes for our sexes being identically intellectually capable. Would the principle of egalitarianism have ever emerged in such a world? I want to say yes, because how are you even distinguishing that world from this one? There exist humans who are fifty IQ points smarter or dumber than other humans who also exist. The batshit crazy idea is that these differences are caused by or intrinsically bound with skin color. As for sex differences, here's the money quote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligenc... > All or most of the major tests commonly used to measure intelligence have been constructed so that there are no overall score differences between males and females. We believe in egalitarianism, therefore IQ tests that show a sex difference are wrong, therefore we use IQ tests that show no sex difference. Now, if there are biological differences between the sexes, they could not only go either way, they could go both ways. It's possible that on average women are better at X and men are better at Y, so you could really design a test to show whatever result you want. It's also obviously the case that no matter what the averages are, the world's highest-scoring male will almost certainly have a better score than the world's lowest-scoring female and vice versa. So arguments of the form "women can't do X" are stupid even if you can find a statistically significant difference in the averages using some metric. Because most people are not exactly average. Discrimination is the assumption that all members of a group are the same.

maxerickson 5y ago

Keep in mind that species is a human concept and not some natural law.

tomca32 5y ago
Is it? I always thought that species is defined as a group that can have fertile offspring. Horse and donkey, for example are not the same species because their offspring, a mule, is not fertile.
- maxerickson 5y ago
  You get the occasional fertile mule!
  - tomca32 5y ago
    Oh interesting. I had no idea
    - tsimionescu 5y ago
      Theoretically that wouldn't be a killer issue, since fertile mules are extremely rare, so you could refine the definition to say "is very very likely to produce fertile offspring" (while horses and donkeys breeding is not). The bigger problem are things that have massive morphological differences but can still successfully interbreed, such as dogs, coyotes and wolves. They produce fertile hybrids and there is good evidence that this occasionally happens in the wild, but nevertheless it is rare and they have clear, stable morphological distinctions, even in areas where they overlap. Even worse, that definition is entirely useless for paleontology, as it is impossible to know if two individuals species could even interbreed, nevermind knowing if their offspring would be fertile. Even modern genetic evidence (which is extremely rare for fossils anyway) is very open to interpretation on the matter of potential interbreeding ("Neanderthal" genes in modern humans could more or less as easily be common genes older than both H. Sapiens and Neanderthals - we have far too little evidence to be sure, and no chance of genetic material from an older ancestor).

nerdponx 5y ago

This reminds me of how the scientific community has attempted to handle the public image of climate change or Covid-19.

pessimizer 5y ago

> Before ww2, the scientific consensus was that we evolved in a branching species rich manner, same as any other animal. This was a time referred to as the "nadir of race relations" in the US, and if you read the output about humans as a species from that period, you'd be a lot less impressed. It's all out of copyright and a lot is available online. It's not what most of us would look at as science, now. It's more like mythmaking.

geofft 5y ago
Also, take a look at the history of eugenics, which was seen in the years before World War II as a legitimate and noble scientific goal - to improve the human species by the application of science and engineering, no more immoral than breeding hardy tomatoes or fast horses. Many countries that joined the war on the side of the Allies had significant scientific, governmental, and public support for eugenics (the US and the UK had a Eugenics Society, Canada had provincial Eugenics Boards in Alberta and British Columbia, etc.). Neutral Sweden had an active eugenic sterilization program. So, the "scientific consensus" of that era involved a number of scientists from many countries who agreed with policies and goals that, in retrospect, we now see as not only politically partisan but also specifically aligned with Nazi political ends.
- cedilla 5y ago
  Yes, a lot of scientists believed in hateful pseudoscience like scientific racism, eugenics and phrenology. Your argument is a very common one but very flawed. Antisemitism, ultranationalism and eugenics aren't bad because the Nazis did it. It's exactly the other way round! Eugenics are just as flawed and criminal when a Swedish doctor or a British politician advocate for it.
  - geofft 5y ago
    I think you're misunderstanding my point - I'm saying that eugenics was bad at the time, even before the Nazis implemented it at horrifying scale, but the scientific consensus of the time was that eugenics was a perfectly reasonable thing to work on, and therefore we should not trust the scientific consensus of the time. If the scientists of that era said that certain humans were an inferior species to Homo sapiens, and the scientists after World War II said that's not true, we shouldn't assume that the pre-war view was pure untainted science and the post-war one was the result of overcorrecting for political/moral reasons - we should consider the possibility that the pre-war scientific consensus was tainted by political/moral views that we now rightly reject.

mcguire 5y ago

Note: He is asserting that this fellow: https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-neanderthalensis https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/h... is an example of "stark morphological differences". I have that funny gut feeling, too; I suspect he's more than half-way to deciding that modern races are actually separate species.