> Only fossils younger than 35,000 years show the same globular shape as present-day humans

and

> They used state-of-art statistics to analyze endocasts of various fossils and present-day humans.

There's nothing uncomfortable about this. They analyzed modern day humans and compared it to humans 35k years ago and found a statistical difference. "Uncomfortable" thoughts fall into the category of pseudoscience which has been long discredited - phrenology, essentially.

That is a question that remains to be answered, and is only just beginning to be looked into through research on epigenetics[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics

Yet I remember reading a study that showed that black children from Africa adopted by white parents in Germany performed at the same level as their peers. There have been other such studies with very similar conclusions.

In scenarios like that, it's also difficult to control for the impact of different level of support for students in academic matters. For example, focused support for under-performing students compared to relatively relaxed support for students meeting expectations.

I could probably also see the impact of different psychological factors associated with being adopted by a family on a different continent being hard to control for.

My mistake. I was incorrect about the study being related to adoptions. It was actually something interesting that happened in Germany. I had read an environmental interpretation of the Eyferth Study: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyferth_study

Even this statement isn't as absolute as you seem to think it is. Your genes may or may not express based on the environment in which you grow up. Primarily genetically determined doesn't make sense, since genes aren't working in a vacuum.

If it's not, please point to the racism. The study makes no moral judgement as to whether it's better to have a bigger parietal lobe vs. visual cortex. Do you think the study's results are somehow inaccurate, or improperly obtained?

> prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.

I completely agree that when looking at differences among population groups in a species, one should avoid normative statements such as "such and such makes this population superior," but is there harm caused by identifying differences in averages, medians, and variance in said defined population groups? In other words, if I am speaking about dogs, is it inappropriate to say chihuahuas are on average smaller than boxers and labs? Same species, but distinct populations.

I think that is at the heart of it. To be "colorblind" to both the historical and modern claims of specific population superiority in one dimension or another is misguided-bad claims made in good faith should be addressed head on, in requests for citations, evidence, etc. Similarly, to identify where differences may occur seems to be a reasonable action so long as there is recognition to cultural or historical drivers too, as GP implicitly identifies with the optical adaptation mentioned (though, TBH, I have not read the study he or she proffers and thus have no insight to the claim).

For a modern-day Darwin, we have James Watson, the father of genetics, who has some interesting things to say [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson#Controversial_com...

James Watson definitely has a masculine, biased perspective, but I mostly consider him to be somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Yet, his career has suffered greatly for his remarks dealing with race and genetics.

Personally, I think it is patronizing if not downright deceitful to pretend differences don't exist between isolated demographics, but it will remain a touchy subject for a long time and most scientists will see what happened to Watson and pursue other areas of research.

This is the tip of the iceberg. Once we have a million genomes tagged with cognitive measures, a huge swath of politically-incorrect but factually true descriptive statements will be confirmed. We need to work now to avoid confusing the descriptive with the normative and be willing to consider technological fixes for unfair distributions of economically valuable allies, such as embryo selection and direct genetic modification. Our society is so in denial of biological realities, this may not happen in time. But there will be competitive pressure from Asian (and perhaps Islamic) societies that do not share our tabbos.

A short story about the consequences of normalized post-birth genetic alteration: http://compellingsciencefiction.com/stories/thelittlegods.ht...

A short description of the pre-birth and post-birth conditioning present in Aldous Huxley's famous Brave New World: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World#Fordism_and_so...

The Last Book In The Universe takes a different approach to the issue. A cataclysmic event called The Big Shake destroys society, and only a small group of surviving scientists hidden underground were able to genetically modify their offspring to be superior to the rest of the world. This creates an immensely divisive class system, and the genetically altered humans live and govern separately from the rest of the planet.

This will not be an easy problem to solve, and there is no telling what the future effects will be. But it seems precise genetic alteration is the inevitable holy grail, doesn't it?

We don't have many isolated demographics (although there are some) both because pre-modern humans were capable of traveling over extremely long distances (i.e. isolation is unlikely) and because humans haven't been around for a particularly long time.

Unlike many species humans are surprisingly genetically similar to each other[0]. Some of this also results from the fact that humans may have passed through a very small genetic bottleneck 100,000 years ago in which the human population was reduced to around 3,000-10,000 people other studies dispute this but arrive at similar genetic conclusions [1].

>but it will remain a touchy subject for a long time and most scientists will see what happened to Watson and pursue other areas of research.

This isn't fair to scientists that legitimately engage in controversial topics. Watson is a bit of a crank, for example:

>'In a lecture hall jammed with more than 200 Berkeley students and faculty members, Watson showed a slide of sad-faced model Kate Moss to support his contention that thin people are unhappy and therefore more ambitious. "Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them," Watson said."' [3]

That isn't a scientific conclusion. Much of the anger against Watson is that he says stupid unscientific things to support his own biases and then hides behind his discovery. This follows a pattern, which occurs across the political spectrum, in which a scientist who makes an important discovery thinks that discovery means everything they say is correct.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation

[1]: Population Bottlenecks and Pleistocene Human Evolution https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/17/1/2/975516

[2]: http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Nobel-Winner-s-Theorie...

I'm not trying to lay down any sort of narrative, I'm just presenting facts in a neutral light.

The quote you selected is found in the link I provided.

If you are saying things like that, and people are getting offended, perhaps record yourself and see what other shit you say and how you say it, and maybe you'll see what they are really offended at.

If you don't say those things, and the judgement doesn't apply, then don't get offended.

Just a suggestion, consider dropping the snarky, aggressive attitude and actually contribute to the discussion I initiated, or move on.

That's not a point, it's an Ad Hominem.

From Wikipedia: A fallacious argumentative strategy whereby an argument is rebutted by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself

And no, I didn't think it was worth commenting on because it's one of my most-encountered fallacies and it just gets tiring.

Disclaimer, "you" is not YOU, it's whoever says non-offensive things, then complains that people get offended.

You said:

> we have extremists who take offense even at assessments like "Men are on average stronger than women."

If you say something like "on average men are stronger than women" and they get offended, then YOU are the problem. You are a poor communicator. No one says things like that unless they are trying to make a point. What is the point you are trying to make? Are you saying men are therefore better at some activity that strength is involved in? That's obviously not necessarily true.

They are getting offended at the WAY you "teach" them, the bigger point you are trying to make by citing obvious drivel. Perhaps, linking pages to wikipedia, as if they've never heard of "ad hominem" or something. That's why you offend people. Not cuz the facts are right, but because the messenger is a prick.

And again, if this isn't you, don't be an extremist and get offended at stupid shit.

> If you say something like "on average men are stronger than women" and they get offended, then YOU are the problem. You are a poor communicator. No one says things like that unless they are trying to make a point. What is the point you are trying to make? Are you saying men are therefore better at some activity that strength is involved in?

You're misunderstanding the nature of the sentiment. It's silly and provocative to go around saying "Hey did you know African descendants statistically make better runners?" or "Hey did you know women are weaker than men?", for the same reasons you listed.

But scientists who make statistically valid claims like this are often lambasted, and while some of them (Watson) are trying to use these discoveries to strengthen their biases, many more are not.

And there are useful things to come out of this. For example, the notion that women tend to be more emotional than men. Or, put in another way, that men tend to be more emotionally reserved than women.

We could ignore this fact, or we could call it toxic masculinity, or we could actually take it into consideration when dealing with people we don't know well by making statistical assumptions that guide our behavior. We could have more positive intersexual interactions keeping in mind the statistical strengths and weaknesses of each gender, and not agitating or playing into them.

> They are getting offended at the WAY you "teach" them . . . Perhaps, linking pages to wikipedia, as if they've never heard of "ad hominem" or something . . . That's why you offend people. Not cuz the facts are right, but because the messenger is a prick

I didn't link to Wikipedia, I provided a relevant context. Because people who truly understand Ad Hominem and its dangers are careful not to fall into that trap. But you did, and you are doing so again several times with the above quote. I'm not being a prick at all by pointing out your logical fallacy, even if it makes you feel embarrassed or momentarily ignorant. Being corrected is the price we pay for engaging in these discussions, and the one doing the correcting is not a prick for doing so.

Orthogonal to the matter at hand, I have indeed taken on a certain negative attitude towards you in my arguments because you started off the thread by attacking my character and insulting me, accusing me of doing something I never claimed to do. This conversation started off on the wrong foot and if you had wanted me to be nicer, you should not have begun by dishing out an Ad Hominem.

The entire position of my discussion in this overall thread has been one of rational conservatism, I've even spoken against extremism, so to imply that I am being extremist in such a way that you can back out if you need to and claim that I misunderstood you is only furthering to create animosity in this discussion.