Brain Evolution, Population Genetics and Armchair Kookery - I

I said a while ago that the announcement of the research papers by Bruce Lahn et. al. would be sure to set all the same old intellectually third-rate kooks howling with (entirely unjustified) delight, and events have since proven* this assertion to be correct, but having now read the two papers in question myself in their entirety, I think it's about time I laid out in some detail precisely why any invidious inferences about the differing capabilities of different "races" are not only unjustified, but are actually a mark of the near-total ignorance and utter stupidity of those who make them.

*Note the blanket statement that it is an "incongenial fact that black intelligence is lower" by a certain loudmouth who takes umbrage at being called on his promotion of racist nonsense as "fact" ...

Some Background

Before getting down to business, I'd like to start off with a brief discussion on some rudiments of population genetics and how it relates to the work done by actual biologists who spend their time sussing out the often extremely convoluted details of how genes are translated into all those proteins which govern how organisms function. A common misconception many people have of how things work is that there are one or a few genes "for" this trait or that one, the presence of absence of which determines whether an organism will or will not manifest a particular trait; a related misconception is that a gene which influences one particular trait will have an effect on that trait only or even primarily, and that therefore any allelic differences we notice must pertain to whatever phenotypical differences we think we already know they're responsible for. If both of these things were true, population genetics would be a much more tractable subject, but unfortunately, neither is even close to accurately describing reality.

The truth about the way genes work is that other than in the case of simple mendelian traits of the kind which geneticists have had most success studying during the last century, it is almost unheard of in genetics research to discover single genes which are able to account for more than a minute fraction of variation in any given trait; furthermore, the very reason why so many traits in any given population happen to abide by a normal distribution is because to the extent said traits aren't determined by environmental differences, they must be under the influence of very many genes, and the smoother the curve, the greater the number of underlying genes must be - this is nothing more than a generalization of the binomial theorem with which we are all familiar. In the case of the human brain, we know that about half of all genes - or some 15,000 of the total - are expressed in the brain during the course of development, and there is no a priori reason to believe that variations in any of them, or even in whatever regulatory regions might govern their behavior, will have no impact on how said organ functions. In light of all the foregoing, anybody who thinks we will find 20 or even 50 genes which rigorously account for, say, 90% of all "genetic" variation in "IQ" or whatever nebulous measure of intellect we decide upon is a fool at best.

Having discussed the "one trait -> one or a few genes" fallacy, let me turn now to its counterpart, namely the belief that a gene's only or main function must be to determine any single particular trait (hence all the idiotic talk of genes "for" IQ, homosexuality, jazz improvisation, etc.). Genes code for proteins, not explicit traits, and it is part of the blind genius of evolution that individual proteins are co-opted to serve multiple roles all the time, so much so that there is even a technical name for the phenomenon, to whit, pleiotropy. Underlying all the ignorant chatter about how the ASPM and microcephalin variants written about by Dr. Lahn must be genes "for" cognition is the assumption that because faults in both genes have been implicated in brain disorders, and because differences exist between humans and chimps in both genes, then "the" purpose of the existence of these new variants has to be to code for "IQ" or some such thing: but the reality is that with an organ as complex as the human brain, there are very many ways for a gene malfunction to lead to devastating consequences, often through causal chains nobody would have guessed beforehand.

To illustrate how things aren't always what they seem, and why it is important to understand the underlying biochemistry before jumping to conclusions, let us consider phenylketonuria: this is a genetic disorder which is characterised by mental retardation, and an uninformed observer might easily jump to the conclusion that this means defects in the gene implicated in it must result in some crucial feature of the brain being wired wrongly, leading to lower IQ scores. And yet, as we now know, the depressed IQ which accompanies phenylketonuria has nothing to do with brain wiring, but is the result of an inability of the sufferers' metabolic systems to produce sufficient levels of phenylalanine hydroxylase: in the presence of a diet which makes up for this deficiency, the IQ scores of the genes carriers turn out to be normal, and what might have been ascribed to an "IQ gene" is in fact just one particularly visible manifestation of an enzyme deficiency which has several other side-effects.

The misconceptions about how genes work extend beyond these two errors, however, and there's a third issue I'd like to discuss which goes by the technical name epistasis. The basic idea behind this term is that if genes at more than one locus govern the expression of a trait, they need not do so in a straightforward, additive fashion like so many dollars which can be netted against each other - even if a gene happens to code for a particular phenotype, it could well be that the trait will not be expressed in the slightest if the allele at some other gene locus isn't the right one. To give an example, suppose there are two genes which govern hair color in mice, with gene A coding for an enzyme which produces the melanin which makes hair black, and gene B coding for another enzyme which modifies the product of gene A so that the resulting hairs are grey (agouti): if a mouse happens to be carrying two broken copies of A, then that mouse is destined to an albino, regardless of how well its copies of B might function, as the enzymes which the products of B alter simply won't be produced. The point here is that an error or variation at some step in a multistep biochemical pathway can suffice to alter the rest of the successive steps in such a way that simplistic totalling of the presence or absence of alleles "for" this or that leads to completely wrong results: genetic background matters, and even if a gene can be shown to affect the expression of a trait in a particular population, there's no reason to believe it will also do so in a different population, even if we are able to adequately control environmental variation (this isn't merely theoretical - see, for instance, this paper, which finds that APoE, although repeatedly implicated as a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease amongst white Americans, is not associated with elevated risk in either African-Americans or Hispanics).

I've discussed three common errors common amongst idiots giving to misusing the abstracts of papers they haven't fully understood to grind their nasty little axes, but I don't want to leave the impression that this is in any way comprehensive. The fact is that I could write a small textbook covering such ground, but I'd much rather turn now to applying some of the above to a rudimentary model which I've selected to weight the argument heavily in favor of those who want to argue that they now have the genetic smoking gun pointing at the "incongenial fact" [sic] of "lower black intelligence"; let's see how their reasoning fares even under the best of circumstances.

A Toy Model of IQ Variation

For the purpose of argument, I'm going to go along with the entirely unfounded assumption that the new ASPM and Microcephalin variants Bruce Lahn's work indicates as undergoing positive selection are in fact "IQ" genes; furthermore, I'm not only going to abide by the implicit assumption that any such genes must be coding for more "IQ" rather than less* (since when have peasant farmers needed to be smarter than hunter-gatherers?), but also that there are only 10 "IQ" genes in total, accounting for all IQ variation which can be ascribed to genetics. I'm going to make the assumption that epistasis is totally unimportant, in order to make the model tractable (this biases things in favor of the IQ cranks because the more complex the genetic interactions which govern "IQ", the less likely it is that they're going to isolate the underlying genes any time soon), and in addition, I'm going to assume that environmental factors have only a marginal effect on IQ, leading to at most 5 points either way in the best and worst circumstances. Finally, I'll assume that each one of 10 loci is responsible for exactly 10% of the total variation (reasonable, as otherwise one would have to imagine the existence of at least one as-yet unmapped "IQ" gene which accounts for an even greater proportion of variation) - say 10 points each - and that there are only 2 alleles at every locus: if a person has two copies of the "good" allele, he gets 20 extra IQ points, if he has just one copy, we give him 10 IQ points, and if he only has two copies of the "bad" gene, he gets no points whatsoever.

Under the model described above, a person who has 1 copy of each good gene will have an IQ between 95 and 105 depending on the quality of his or her environment, a person who has 14 good alleles and 6 bad ones will fall between 135 and 145, while any genetically lucky person who has 2 copies of all 10 good genes will have an IQ between 195 and 205. Given all the above, as well as the existence of two genetically differentiated subpopulations P_A and P_B, what can we logically conclude about the relative intellectual capabilities of the typical members of both groups based on the news that IQ genes 1 and 2 (henceforth IQ_1 and IQ_2) have a frequency of 70% and %80 in P_A, while the same genes occur at a frequency of 40% and 50% in P_B?

If you answered "Nothing", hand yourself a prize: the fact is that we haven't been told anything at all about the frequencies of all the other IQ genes, and for all we know there might be frequency differences in those that suffice to completely swamp any effects which arise from differences in IQ_1 and IQ_2: if IQ_3 = 20%, IQ_4 = 30% and IQ_5 = 40% in P_A while IQ_3 = 65%, IQ_4 = 55% and IQ_5 = 60% in P_B, and if the rest of the IQ_N occur at the same frequency in both groups, then P_B will be the one whose members have the higher average IQ, not P_A, and the fact is that even under the extremely simplistic model we have here, there are an astronomical number of ways in which one can obtain each one of any such outcome even with IQ_1 and IQ_2 distributed as mentioned: if we disregard which particular IQ weighting gets assigned to what locus, this is easy to demonstrate using the theory of integer partitions - taking the distinct orderings into account just inflates the answer by a multiple of n!, where n = 8 if we take IQ_1 and IQ_2 as given. The only circumstance under which we would be safe in assuming that the frequency differences in IQ_1 and IQ_2 implied the lower intellectual capability of P_B would be if we knew that the two groups did not differ at IQ_3, IQ_4, ..., IQ_N, but this assumption is entirely unwarranted in light of the fact that we already know that the two groups have differing allele frequencies at very many loci, a point of which "race realist" cranks are usually eager to remind us; making it even more dubious would be any research report which indicated that the "good" alleles at IQ_1 and IQ_2 were under strong selective pressure in P_A, as an identity of the rest of the "IQ" allele frequencies would leave us with the conundrum of explaining why their benefits should be less evident for population P_B.

Of course, in all I've said so far I've assumed that the the frequency differences were on the order of 30% for each of IQ_1 and IQ_2, but what if the differences turn out to be just 3% each - or, mathematically equivalently, there turn out to be 10 times as many IQ loci, or 100 in total, and each one is responsible for just 1% of IQ variation? This is where our assumptions about the impact of environmental differences come in, as it is obvious that even the extremely restricted influence we attribute to environment would be more than enough to completely swamp the genetic differences between P_A and P_B, so that even though one might think P_A ought to do better on average in IQ tests (an assumption which is itself completely unfounded, as I've explained above), the members of P_B could actually end up with an average IQ as much as 4 points higher than those of P_A! The only way we'd be able to sort out which group had greater intellectual potential would be to place the members of both in identical (and ideally uniform) environments, but this too would only be possible if, say, there weren't any phenotypical differences between the two groups which led us to take it as an "incongenial fact" that the members of P_A were of lower intelligence by nature (with only "politically correct" cowards supposedly stopping we "few", "brave" souls from frankly discussing said "fact") and therefore treating them differently, expecting and demanding less of the members of P_A, and providing them with inferior environments while continually, vocally putting down their capacities in the name of "scientific discussion" [sic] ...

I've said a great deal so far about how population genetics works in theory, but in the next half of this article, I'll be discussing how everything I've written about here applies to research results disclosed here and here. If at the end of that piece any of you are still in doubt as to the laughable pseudo-reasoning behind the puffery coming out of the mouths of certain "race realist" fools, then nothing under heaven and earth will ever convince you.

Comments

[Abiola Lapite]

[There is no universal "black behavior".]

Try telling that to idiots who know absolutely nothing about Africa's history (and no, watching Tarzan movies does NOT qualify), who lack any knowledge whatsoever of any African languages - and yet see fit to judge polyglot Africans as mentally deficient despite being ignorant of any languages but English themselves, who haven't even touched the soil of the immense continent once in their lives, and yet who imagine that watching "Boyz N Tha Hood" or a Live Aid appeal makes them fully qualified to pronounce on "black" "pathology" and other such nonsense.

You know, for me the most appalling thing about these idiots, even worse than their eagerness to embrace brazenly manipulated datasets published by preachers of racial genocide, is that by the standards they're so eager to hold up as evidence for "black" inferiority, their own not-so-distant ancestors don't hold up too well either: what were all those Celtic and Germanic types doing when the Romans were going to Athens to study rhetoric and philosophy, and after Rome fell, how brilliant was the society all those Germanic tribesmen replaced it with? How many peasants could read and write throughout those long centuries when Europeans were busy slaughtering each other in wars which wiped out greater proportions of their populations than the civil war in the Congo has managed, and why did it take them all of 1400 years or so to attain Roman levels of literacy? How come all those genetically high-IQ endowed Europeans suffered through plague pandemics so devastating today's AIDS crisis seems like almost nothing in comparison? The literacy rate in most sub-Saharan African countries is higher today than it was anywhere in continental Europe at the close of the 18th century, and its even higher than in today's supposedly higher-IQ South Asia, but these dishonest maggots won't let such inconvenient facts get in the way of their rush to write off "blacks" as uneducable savages.

[Chuckles]

Sometimes I am baffled that Intellectual positions that I assume sane people take for granted are still questioned in well funded quarters. Its like someone debating the shape of the earth or something - It would be comical if these guys werent so serious!!!

[...polyglot Africans as mentally deficient despite being ignorant of any languages but English themselves...]

This is of course notable - Languages in different *language families* of course; certainly of a higher scale than a French person telling me he speaks Spanish also. Its funny isnt it: Given the fairly decent oil bubble economy of the 70s and 80s, the Nigerian High school Student in a city could count on graduating with knowing English, 2 Nigerian Languages and either Arabic or French. In Francophone countries like Togo, toss in German to boot. You encounter people like this in the West, 18 years old and you're like - *wow* - You *come* from Africa?
Indeed, I know a young lady from Chad who uses at least 4 different languages when she's on the phone. I mean, even claiming that Blacks are verbally equipped (as some Race realists do) is insufficient. The acquisition of language is no mere trait explainable by "verbal equipping".

[...what were all those Celtic and Germanic types doing when the Romans were going to Athens to study rhetoric and philosophy...]

Shagging Horses? But this is always covered up by claiming Mediterranean patrimony in the guise of "wesetern civilization" - a fanciful gimmick no doubt - Yet, dare raise the notion that Egyptian cultural influence was not so divorced from the Hellenistic world and not so unrelated to Southern African cultural movements and you get a hellstorm - in spite of the evidence! Ergo, Egyptians (whose colour I am not the least interested in) are vigorously affirmed to be raceless or at least non-black (a la Lefkowitz and Howe) - while the Greeks and the Romans are definitely white: The strange reality, that race was as meaningless to the Greeks as it was to the Egyptians is chucked outside the window. Greeks = white; Egyptians = Not Black.

[...and why did it take them all of 1400 years or so to attain Roman levels of literacy?...]

Not just Roman - not too long ago, the Asiatics were also inferior. Now a couple of them are Honorable whites. Anytime some idiot starts harping to me about Proust of the Papuans or Bach of the Bantu - I tell him; Shussh - what were Europeans doing when Murasaki Shikibu was penning Genji Monogatari? Chaucer's Canterbury Tales didnt appear until late 14th century almost 400 years after - but this didnt stop some folks from opining about the inferiority of *all* non-white peoples: I realize the position has changed somewhat - Now Asians have been "grudgingly" accepted while Africans get the schtick.

[... suffered through plague pandemics so devastating today's AIDS crisis seems like almost nothing in comparison?...]

The Black death killed more people in Europe in 3 years than AIDS has been able to kill in the whole world for 50 years - and really, technolgical advancements dont correct for this: You would think that suffering, disease and war was the perpetual lot of Africans!

[...these dishonest maggots won't let such inconvenient facts get in the way of their rush to write off "blacks" as uneducable savages...]

It helps their psychosis, I guess. Look at this (Ctrl F and "Nigerian"):

http://www.collegeconfidential.com/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?70/34184

http://www.collegeconfidential.com/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?5/40595

"Ethnographic" engagements like this certainly help to dispel a lot of these nasty stereotypes. When it comes to talking about peoples and cultures, there simply is no substitute for engagement. I just cannot believe that the halls of Western academia for all their objectivity can be penetrated by this kind of nonsense - this kind of "Africa is country, Nelson Mandela is the President" reasoning. I know, I studied other cultures long and hard - why people cant make the same concession for Africans instead of the stereotypical lumping, dismissiveness and sheer ignorance is beyond me! It takes some work to get from the Odu Ifa to Proust, but I did it: I just get amazed at the laziness of some of these folks and it has only helped me to appreciate Cultural Anthropologists more: Even though I disagree with most of all their theoretical frameworks.

[dsquared]

interestingly, lots of race nuts appear to claim Irish ancestry (Malloy is certainly an Irish name) and it really is not so long ago that Western scientific opinion was divided between those who thought that the Irish were genetically inferior because they were a separate race intermediate between black and white and those who thought that they were actually white people whose intellectual and moral character had been eroded by the potatoes they ate. There was a good book (or at least, Max Sawicky recommended it to me which is usually good enough) out a couple of years ago called "How the Irish Became White".

[Jason Soon]

abiola & co
you might be interested in the latest outbreak of academic racial crankery in Australia - details here
http://larvatusprodeo.redrag.net/2005/09/20/deakin-law-review-mcconvill-and-fraser/

and here is the pulled article
http://users.bigpond.net.au/jonjayray/fraser.html

[Jason Soon]

as you can see from the article, both Asians and Africans get an equal serve - Africans because of their allegedly high crime rates and Asians because they will become Australia's new Overlords and discriminate in favour of their coethnics!

[Kevin Donoghue]

I believe the book D^2 mentions is about how Irish-Americans differentiated themselves from African-Americans in the 19th century. That’s probably the main reason why there are lots of race nuts with Irish ancestry – those ancestors had to insist on their whiteness in order to be accepted in polite society.

I don’t follow the twists and turns of the IQ fetishists very closely, but they must have a problem with the results they were reporting a generation or two ago, when there was a “significant” gap between Irish and British IQs. Sir Cyril Burt and Hans Eysenck were quite fond of using this to explain why the Irish were mostly to be found on building sites rather than in the City. Presumably the IQ scores have narrowed in recent decades? Of course the racists often qualify their case to extinction by stressing that there are many variables involved (cue the statistical sophistry). But it must be tiresome having to reinterpret the earlier results, as Koreans, Indians and others get moved up the rankings

[Abiola Lapite]

I can't say I'm in the slightest bit surprised at the "Goldilocks" thinking of Andrew Fraser: "Them blacks are bad because they're dumb, violent and lazy, and them yellows are dangerous cause they're such cunning, servile coolies, but we - ah, we are Just Right, not too clever, not too dumb, neither too hardworking nor too idle, not too polite and not too confrontational - we're right in the middle in every way, just the way God the Aryan intended for everyone else to be."

The only reason these types aren't yet giving Asian immigrants a hard time in the United States is because they don't yet percieve them to be a numerical threat, and they need some cover to push their agenda in a country whose ugly history of government-sanctioned racism is still too recent to forget: given enough time and a shift in the demographics, and I'm sure they too will start playing up the "gelbe gefahr" nonsense a kook like Andrew Fraser's trying to pass off as serious academic work in Australia.

[Chuckles]

Noel Igantiev (How the Irish Became White) used to write for Race Traitor magazine - I believe it is now defunct.
There is another book on the same lines by David Roediger (The Wages of Whiteness). It is called "Working Towards Whiteness" - It came out a couple of months ago. It seems that a general prerequisite of social mobility in America is to differentiate yourself from blackness. Its not just the Irish, its Eastern Europeans who come here today not knowing anything about the Race Structure but "find out" that they are white after a couple of months.
I recollect the Fraser brouhaha - It seems he has a particular problem with Sudanese immigrants.

[David B]

I haven't checked out this thread for a while, and now I remember why: the high ratio of personal smears and abuse to serious discussion. Also, Abiola's constant insinuation that he is some great mathematician. I don't doubt that he is a better mathematician than I am - which is not difficult - but as he keeps on proclaiming his own expertise, perhaps he could give us a list of his peer-reviewed publications? I think by now we are entitled to ask.

In my previous comment on this thread I said that "if it [the gene in question] really does have effects on brain function, and if it really has been strongly selected, for whatever reason, in some geographical regions, then people in those regions are likely to differ (on average) in brain functions from those in other regions."

Abiola replies: "This is a non-sequitur: the changes in the gene sequence which have been selected for need have absolutely no effect on the brain itself. Genes don't act in a vacuum, and we already know for a fact that both ASPM and MCPH1 are expressed in many other tissues besides the brain."

Now, first, given what I actually said, it is *not* a non-sequitur. I did not refer to 'changes in the gene sequence', but to a *gene* which has effects on brain function. By 'gene' I meant the particular gene variant (allele) we are all talking about. I think this should be clear from the context, and in particular the previous sentence which said "It is entirely possible that a gene with effects on brain function has been selected in Eurasia for some other reason, e.g. disease resistance". If my intended meaning was not clear, you can accuse me of vagueness or ambiguity but not of a non-sequitur, since my inference *does* follow validly from at least one obvious meaning of what I said. My vagueness is perhaps excusable, because nearly every biologist sometimes talks about 'genes' when strictly they mean 'alleles'. It is best to avoid technical terms as far as possible, and 'gene' is less technical than 'allele'.

Of course I agree with Abiola that it is possible that a gene with some effects on brain function may undergo natural selection for mutations which do *not* change its effect on brain function. This may turn out to be the case. No doubt we shall find out in the next few years.

[Abiola Lapite]

"Abiola's constant insinuation that he is some great mathematician. I don't doubt that he is a better mathematician than I am - which is not difficult - but as he keeps on proclaiming his own expertise, perhaps he could give us a list of his peer-reviewed publications? I think by now we are entitled to ask."

Look, asshole, you aren't "entitled" to even a wart off my backside, and I don't need to "prove" a goddamn thing to you on my own blog. If you don't like it, stop reading, I personally could not give a crap, but I'm not going to be patronizingly lectured on mathematics by the likes of you or Jason Malloy. You're just not in my league, and you never will be other than in your dreams.

[onepeoplesproject]

Jason Soon is a racist at heart, don't believe his "conversion", this is just a distraction, he is a GENE EXPRESSION blogger in cahoots with infamous racist pseudoscientists Paul Wickre and Newamul Khan.

This is a game the GENE EXPRESSION people play, to make someone appear moderate and others voice their truly far-right racist beliefs to convert the unsuspecting and Jason Soon is playing it. Paul Wickre himself promoted this deception. Jason Soon is a racist and his true colors can be seen here.

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/000373.html

Richard, you don't know any of us. If you want to argue that we're muddleheaded that's fine. But you still seem stuck with the idea that people who in good faith accept the possibility of a genetic component to racial differences that go beyond sporting ability are racist, whereas to me not accepting that this is a possibility leaves me with the unpalatable options of either being a Cartesian or a 100% environmentalist.

---

well, Richard you certainly have an inflammatory way of putting things that some of the more immoderate posters on this blog can only sometimes match (Godless and Razib talk about statistical averages in performance of psychometric tests). As a matter of fact, one prominent Malaysian to advance the theory that Malays are congenitally 'stupid and lazy' compared to Chinese and therefore warranted affirmative action because they developed in friendlier climes was none other the prominent Malaysian nationalist and current PM Mahathir. As for me, as I have suggested in past posts, I admit the *possibility* of a genetic component to persistent measured differences (is admitting a possibility really enough to justify consignment to hood wearer territory? what does Steven Pinker think of this?) and there is a lot of data on this in America. I don't know how significant this possibility is as per Malay vs Chinese - obviously Malays and Chinese are closer to each other than they both are to Caucasians but there is sufficient genetic distance between them to put them in different racial 'extended families' too. Nor is there data on IQ for Malays for me to judge how strong the actual disparities are (comparable to say the 1 standard deviation differences one finds in other comparisons). Cultural differences may well be sufficient to account for the disparities in commercial and educational performance - the British practiced benign neglect with respect to the Malays under the misguided idea of 'protecting their culture' while Chinese and Indians were recruited into Malaysia specfically to work the mines and fields. In conclusion I'm not certain - my degree of uncertainty on this issue is less than my degree of uncertainty with respect to the existence of genetically based disparities in the case of blacks and whites though I remain agnostic on both.

As for your other inferences I went to a Malay school (90% Malay students) for 2 years in primary school, and my uncle by marriage is a bumiputera (and so by implication is my cousin). One can have civil discussions on this issue without lynching anybody, you know.
Posted by: Jason Soon

--------

Incidentally you should note - go back to the old gnxp blog at blogspot and read the comments facilities. You can see the record of the discussions I've had with Razib and Godless over HBD where I was putting the culturalist perspective. I was arguing the Jared Diamond/Tom Sowell case with them. I still find Diamond's book far more compelling than the sketchy story that Rushton has produced. I still fundamentally think that the 'culturalist' story may be important and don't think there's enough evidence to stick to any quantification at this stage. But I'm happy to stick up for GeneXP. Why? Because if I thought that lack of a detailed story currently was enough to exclude something as a hypothesis then I should be in favour of Intelligent Design. And because I like to think I'm open minded and the main posters on GeneXP and most of their readers are open-minded.
The other reason is the anti-Cartesianism I alluded to. My open-mindedness to HBD is an unavoidable consequence of consistent adherence to philosophical materialism and reductionism. Let me reproduce the following argument from Godless' old blog
1. Human beings, like all living things, were shaped by the forces of evolution. In particular, natural selection pressure applied to humans.

2. All traits evidenced by humans are the result of chemical processes. Under the hood, all your pains, thoughts, and feelings are nothing more than a very complicated cocktail of neurotransmitters and nerve cells.

3. Your genetics fundamentally influence your behavior by controlling which chemical processes are triggered in response to environmental stimuli. Furthermore, genetics are affected by natural selection.

4. Therefore, we must admit that it is possible for there to exist genetic differences between individuals that are more than skin deep and were shaped by natural selection pressure

Add in the 'race as extended family' idea and logic leads you to some acceptance of HBD even if Rushton's story is a crock
Posted by: Jason Soon

--------

My friend and guest blogger Jason Soon has some very level headed things to say on the message board (check out some of the comments-I used to joke with godless that we were "Darwin's Wolves," but my readers are a veritable pack!):

This is a matter of True Vs False - end of story - and taking a position on this one way or the other doesn't make anyone a cross burner. Anyone who implies otherwise is no different from the sorts of relativists who can't separate the political from the Truth. As for interest - some people are interested in this human biodiversity stuff because it's intrinsically interesting. Not because it supports an agenda, not because they wear white hoods in their spare time but because they find it interesting. I find it interesting and fascinating. Perhaps people like Richard don't believe people are capable of finding this interesting for its own sake because he's a political hack and like all political hacks everything is about Politics (that sounds a bit like the relativists too). The Positive and the Normative are 2 different things, Richard, get it?....

----------

Mr. Soon obviously does NOT get it. This speech is incitement to race-hatred andis illegal in Europe. It should be illegal in the United States and we are going to move beyond talk to make it so. Maybe the threat of a jail term will stop these racist assholes from twisting science and spreading their filth.

[JMP]

I believe this is Jason Malloy:

http://www.onaleeamesstudio.com/student/studentpics/profiles/menujason.htm

[David B]

Have I touched a nerve? If someone (Abiola) constantly make claims to know more about something than other people (including Anthony Edwards, professor of statistics at Cambridge, etc) then his readers are entitled to ask what are his qualifications for making such claims.

[Abiola Lapite]

Where do you get your sense of entitlement from? You aren't "entitled" to anything, your name isn't Anthony Edwards, and if you don't like my rules, don't bother commenting here. Nobody's forcing you to read this, I really don't give a shit what you choose to believe or not, and I will show absolutely zero tolerance of snidely condescending crap from people like you and Malloy who will never learn half as much mathematics as I've managed to forget. Either you have something to say and you say it in a respectful manner, or you try to talk down your nose to me one more time and get yourself banned permanently from here, which is what you seem to want.

[Jason Soon]

uhh yeah Onepeople's Project. I haven't had a 'change of heart'. You can find similar arguments on Lavartus Prodeo where I argued that the Ashkenazi intelligence study should be considered on its merits rather than its political implications. I go out of my way to talk about cultural differences even in that response to a blogger who was accusing us all of being racist (this was back in the days when I'd been invited to join GNXP despite being a fan of Jared Diamond). It's all there and Abiola can make his call if he thinks my consistently agnostic stance on this is 'racist'.

[Abiola Lapite]

"It's all there and Abiola can make his call if he thinks my consistently agnostic stance on this is 'racist'."

Obviously, I don't share any such view. There's nothing wrong with investigating any genetic underpinnings that may or may not underlie whatever we choose to call "intelligence" (assuming such a thing can so easily be universally defined); what *is* wrong is the mendacious and logically-addled pushing of ideologically-motivated junk science, and the systematic distortion of the more modest claims of serious researchers, in order to advance a racialist worldview. It is precisely in order to maintain the distinction between the two sets of activities that real scientists (as opposed to the armchair, Steve Sailer variety) know enough to tread carefully in such matters, as they are too well-aware of the dubious history of "race" obsessed thinking to wish to see their subject thrown into disrepute yet a second time.

[Chuckles]

[...know enough to tread carefully in such matters...]

From all indications, Bruce Lahn is himself a Genetic Determinist to a significant extent - but the caution with which he approach the interpretation of his results vis-a-vis intelligence is something these blogtype pontificators lack.

[Abiola Lapite]

Exactly: he must know that there's no better way for him to piss away his scientific credibility than for him to start leaping to generalizations his research findings can't support.