*** The Official MAGAposting thread ***

[oskar]

I expounded on this with the below



Let me expound more. The phenomenon I'm discussing is standard biology.

Omg wuf, buddy. No, it's not. It could not be further from it.

Here's an illustration: Let's say every race of humans interbred randomly. That means that Asians and Africans and whites and Latinos, everybody, partnered randomly and produced offspring. This would result in no more Asians, no more Africans, no more whites, etc.. Humankind would become one mono-race. The differences between the races we have today would vanish, and this would result in less diversity of the species. To the degree that race diversity positively affects fitness, the deterioration of it would reduce humankind's fitness.

Fully integrating diverse groups deteriorates their diversity. Zero integration between groups is also awful for fitness.

No population evolves to be less fit. A gene's fitness is defined by it's ability to result in reproduction. The gene that reproduces is the most fit. So if somehow a brownish mono-race would evolve. It would be because it's the most fit one. By definition.

For a quick catch-up on the usefulness of racial classification in humans, I recommend this chapter from The Ancestor's Tale: goo.gl/bwjV46

This is one of the more edgy views on human races in biology and I recommend reading the entire chapter because it can be easily quotemined to justify some xenophobic nonsense.

You don't lose genetic diversity by interbreeding races. Those genes don't disappear. Neither do they blend like colors. The full sets are still available to be used in the next generation.


Ong is correct in pointing out that even in your hypothetical where you would remove all types of selection pressures that go into the production of a new human being, instead you just randomly shuffle sperm and eggs around (why you would do that is a different matter) - even then, the individuals would revert back to their racial differences you see today within a couple of generations once returned to the usual selection mechanism.
You see exactly that happening with stray dogs once left to their own devices will return to wolf like behaviors and features in a very short time even after thousands of years of artificial selection.

[wufwugy]

No population evolves to be less fit. A gene's fitness is defined by it's ability to result in reproduction. The gene that reproduces is the most fit. So if somehow a brownish mono-race would evolve. It would be because it's the most fit one. By definition.

There is more to fitness than the state of having been naturally selected and ability to breed in that context. Ability to be selected for new environments and to breed in them is also fitness. A species can breed such that it is the most fit for its current environment while losing ability to adapt to a new environment.

You don't lose genetic diversity by interbreeding races.

What I'm referring to is more along the lines of fixation and along the lines of how Frequency-dependent selection is the hypothesis that as alleles become more common, they become more vulnerable. The resultant product of a species that breeds randomly is different ability to adapt to new environments. It's like comparing how a diverse collection of corn may have in it subsets that are more able to resist a new pathogen, yet if you bred all corn together long enough, that same pathogen would more likely wipe out more/all corn.

The full sets are still available to be used in the next generation.

Are they available to use for every subsequent generation? Do they appear at an unchanged rate?

Ong is correct in pointing out that even in your hypothetical where you would remove all types of selection pressures that go into the production of a new human being, instead you just randomly shuffle sperm and eggs around (why you would do that is a different matter) - even then, the individuals would revert back to their racial differences you see today within a couple of generations once returned to the usual selection mechanism.
You see exactly that happening with stray dogs once left to their own devices will return to wolf like behaviors and features in a very short time even after thousands of years of artificial selection.

I get this. It's because in the real world there is environment differentiation. The hypothetical was in response to an idea that didn't include environment differentiation.


BTW I am not, have never been, and do not consume material by race elitists or xenophobes. The idea I expressed I got from the best mathematician I know of. Sadly I can't find the reference again because everything gets buried on Twitter.

[oskar]

There is more to fitness than the state of having been naturally selected and ability to breed in that context. Ability to be selected for new environments and to breed in them is also fitness. A species can breed such that it is the most fit for its current environment while losing ability to adapt to a new environment.



What I'm referring to is more along the lines of fixation and along the lines of how Frequency-dependent selection is the hypothesis that as alleles become more common, they become more vulnerable. The resultant product of a species that breeds randomly is different ability to adapt to new environments. It's like comparing how a diverse collection of corn may have in it subsets that are more able to resist a new pathogen, yet if you bred all corn together long enough, that same pathogen would more likely wipe out more/all corn.



Are they available to use for every subsequent generation? Do they appear at an unchanged rate?




I get this. It's because in the real world there is environment differentiation. The hypothetical was in response to an idea that didn't include environment differentiation.


BTW I am not, have never been, and do not consume material by race elitists or xenophobes. The idea I expressed I got from the best mathematician I know of. Sadly I can't find the reference again because everything gets buried on Twitter.

Well I guess it's fitting that the closest analogue study you could find was done on corn. At least you're placing your subgroup of idealogues on the right branch of the tree of life.
This also relates back nicely to the discussion we had about how automation could replace creative jobs in the near future, because those insults write themselves.

Regarding fixation: Even in the most ideal abstract models, alleles will reach an equilibrium rather than get fixated. It takes some serious population bottlenecks for fixation to happen in the wild. If you feel like torturing WolframAlpha, you can plug human population numbers into those equations.

A good question to try to answer for yourself in this context would be why recessive alleles don't just disappear, and why recessive alleles that objectively suck for evolutionary fitness don't disappear either.

[wufwugy]

Well I guess it's fitting that the closest analogue study you could find was done on corn. At least you're placing your subgroup of idealogues on the right branch of the tree of life.
This also relates back nicely to the discussion we had about how automation could replace creative jobs in the near future, because those insults write themselves.

Regarding fixation: Even in the most ideal abstract models, alleles will reach an equilibrium rather than get fixated. It takes some serious population bottlenecks for fixation to happen in the wild. If you feel like torturing WolframAlpha, you can plug human population numbers into those equations.

A good question to try to answer for yourself in this context would be why recessive alleles don't just disappear, and why recessive alleles that objectively suck for evolutionary fitness don't disappear either.

Along these lines, what causes speciation (or just variation within species)? Is it *something something how genes express something something*? Is it fair to say that a population could reproduce in such a way that genes that might have a specific effect lose their "prominence," resulting in that effect no longer remaining?

You clearly know more about this stuff than I do, so you probably have some good answers.

[wufwugy]

Can never go wrong reposting the GOAT

[oskar]

Along these lines, what causes speciation (or just variation within species)? Is it *something something how genes express something something*? Is it fair to say that a population could reproduce in such a way that genes that might have a specific effect lose their "prominence," resulting in that effect no longer remaining?

You clearly know more about this stuff than I do, so you probably have some good answers.

I skipped over this originally because you could just google it, but this is preferable to what we have going on right now. Speciation occurs when two groups can no longer produce fertile offspring. Horses and donkeys can produce offspring, but their offspring cannot reproduce. They are effectively speciated. Unlike horses and donkeys, northern and southern white rhinos look practically identical, but cannot interbreed. Their last common ancestor could go back as far as 1M years.

In the chapter I linked from The Ancestor's Tale, Dawkins uses the example of two common grasshopper species who are identical in appearance, but will not interbreed. They can however interbreed if you pair the female of one species with a particularly hot male of the other species. Literally. You have to heat the male up if you want the female to respond to his mating call. In laboratory conditions these grasshoppers can produce fertile offspring, but since it never happens in the wild, they are considered speciated and will continue to drift apart genetically until they will no longer be able to produce offspring. This is an interesting example because usually speciation requires geographical isolation.

Darwins finches are a great example why you don't need to worry about a brown mono race. There are 13 species of finches spread around various galapagos islands. Through environmental pressures they evolved so dramatically different that they were originally documented as entirely different species and were only later found to be subspecies of finches sharing a common ancestor only a couple million years ago. This common ancestor carried virtually all the genetic information necessary to produce 13 separate subspecies that behave and look dramatically different.

It is a common misconception that mutation is the primary driving force in evolution. Very gradual changes through environmental and sexual selection are much more prominent. Which is why in the mathematical models you quoted, both of those factors have to be eliminated to be able to make meaningful predictions. In the real world those factors will always remain the main driving force.