I just got a long, whiny, self-serving email from a Mr John Buford, in which he claims that I was in error for banning him, because he once took a 4-credit course in anthropology, and his comments about race are therefore credible.
You may recall Mr Buford by his pseudonym, “hahajohnnyb”. He’s a racist moron.
I won’t bother with posting the whole of his letter, which is mostly a lot of chest-thumping about how smart he is, but I will share with you his closing threat.
It is your blog, and you certainly have the right to ban whomever you choose, and I shall respect your ban, but I intend to post a link to your site on Stormfront, which gets 10s of thousands of hits a day and has 100s of thousands of members, so you will get to hear from an ever increasing number of racial realists. I shall not stop only at your site, but will also have my people inflitrate the entire Dawkins Network with realism about race. Maybe, we will be able to open the minds of a few of your co-religionists or maybe we will make the Dawkins movement look like a bunch of Nazis, either way. You lose.
Woo-hoo! More traffic! Maybe I’ll be able to cover my daughter’s tuition payments this term, after all!
More likely, a few thugs and rednecks will straggle over and leave a few illiterate comments, but be prepared. I’ll also be ready. One of the nice things about our recent software update is one-click comment deletion.
[Insert rant about affirmative action/librul hypocrisy here]
Observer,
Please name all of the distinct, biological races (within the human species). Thanks in advance.
Reader5000,
Please name all the distinct cultures that exist within the human species. Oh, thanks in advance.
When challenged the idiot gets snarky. This is classic behavior, seen in a vast majority of the cases.
especially hilarious since the issue of “culture” has been quite sufficiently explained by SC upthread…
jack lecou,
1.) Your values exist within the framework of an ideology (liberalism) that has a long history.
2.) The Anglo-American race hierarchy wasn’t replicated in Latin America which was also enslaved and colonized.
3.) Hollywood aside, I haven’t seen this shattering of racial stereotypes. Sub-Saharan Africa is a basket case. Haiti is a failed state. Negroes are still typically less intelligent than whites and Asians.
Jadehawk,
Where precisely does one “culture” become another?
Ooh, the troll is morphing, indicating his displeasure at our rational response which he can’t refute. Now a series of stupid questions, trying to control the discussion. Will the regulars be sucked in, or will they prove his ideas wrong at a higher level? Stay tuned in to “Blog Anthropolgy”.
Oh Noes! Sockpuppitz!
All of those examples by hahajohnyb yet nothing about what effects colonialism has on an opposed people.
Oh, wait, silly me, how else can we hope to get anything out of an intellectually inferior race.
[Racist]:
Doesn’t an African American POTUS count? ;)
Please, can’t we all just go and watch some original Star Trek now? The one with the aliens whose faces were half white and half black?
There’s nothing like sententious early sixties race relations lessons to put everything in perspective. Don’t make me take away your nerd badges, now. ;)
(Oh, and I’m betting Matt=awer=Various Observers. Just a thought. There’s a definite sock-puppetty feel to their posts. That’s why Jesus invented KillFile!)
Colonialism is responsible for the poverty and backwardness of Ethiopia? That’s news to me.
501-503,506-507
Turnips
Oooh, a total change in subject. (yawn) Classic behavior. Next up, anger. Stay tuned to this channel for further developements.
Have you got your IQ scores handy? I’d love to see where you fit in.
So the Unobservant Observer is still trolling, looking for a fight she hasn’t the aptitude to comprehend, let alone win.
Compare us to fundamentalists again. That’s my favourite bit of yours.
#511
Robert Mugabe is another accomplished African leader. If I recall correctly, he has more degrees than Barack Obama.
Brownian, I think this racist troll is hahajohnyb. It is that smarmy way of trying to make it’s odious ideas seem reasonable. Yet it slips out enough racist invective to cover it’s slime with shit.
Neither relevant, nor in dispute.
This assertion would surprise many Latin Americans. Different in some of the particulars, to be sure, but there was (and is) racism nevertheless.
You’ll note I expressly did not use the word “shattering”. If I had, it wouldn’t be contested by this paragraph anyway, the majority of which seems to consist of a series of racist non-sequiturs.
Another change of subject. Not unexpected. After all, they can never commit themselves so they can’t be refuted. Even though their lack of committing themselves automatically refutes them. Stay tuned for further updates on “blog anthropology”.
My personal favorite is Emperor Jean-Bédel Bokassa. Meredith has a good profile of him in his book.
A meaningless reference. Stay tuned for further developments.
Let’s consider the difference between the way the British ruled India compared to Southern Africa.
In India, while the British held all the senior civil service and military jobs, native Indians were middle level bureaucrats and officers. An Indian Army battalion would have five to ten British officers, particularly the commander and second in command. All other positions, including company commanders and all of the NCOs, were Indians. When the British left India, there were trained and experienced military officers and civil servants who could run the army and the country. The Indian upper and middle class were almost entirely Indian so commerce wasn’t affected either.
In places like South Africa and Rhodesia, whites were in all of the supervisory and managerial positions in the civil service. Blacks were not allowed in the military. In South Africa it was illegal for a black to own property. The same was true in the French, Belgian and Portuguese colonies. So when the colonial powers moved out, there was a massive power vacuum.
India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka were viable countries when the British left. Congo was a disaster even before the Belgians left.
you guys failed to stick with the plan!
Turnips just get ignored. There’s no point in doing anything else.
There is no use in convincing these guys to be more parsnipmonious. Let me rutabaga, Steve, yam not beeting around the bush when I tell you it’s easier to herd carrots. To think otherwise is too radish.
(Not that anyone was ever fooled in the first place, but it’s interesting to see how the whimsical racism-as-nihilism Observer of “haha, wouldn’t it be a fun game to pre-judge people based on blood type” has now fallen back to a more traditional “teh negroes are stoopid” tactic. Smooth.)
Yeah, because there’s never been an insane, dictatorial, genocidal leader of a country with skin colour anything other than black, is there?
Moron.
It’s worth noting also that many of these countries didn’t actually gain independence until very late: the ’60s or ’70s, if not later. And then many of them got the privilege of becoming Cold War proxy battlefields for another decade or two.
But that was probably because of low IQs or something.
Yeah. Also, since Mugabe’s schtick seems to consist almost entirely of stirring up racial resentments and anti-colonial fearmongering, his grip on power couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the colonial legacy, could it?
If sub-Saharan Africans are too stupid to produce the amount of doctors needed there, why are there so many African doctors working abroad?
And why are there so many Cuban doctors practically everywhere, not just Botswana? Are Cubans more intelligent than all other Latin Americans, for example? Or could there be other reasons?
I’m curious about Awer and Matt.
Do they consider themselves progressive, moderate, paleoconservative, or none of the above?
Which of these sites do they visit regularly, if any: Steve Sailer, Majority Rights, American Renaissance, VDARE?
What do they think of the work of the following professors: Henry Harpending, Greg Cochran, Kevin MacDonald, JP Rushton, Bruce Lahn, Richard Lynn?
I think we are seeing a resurgence of scientific racism. Remember the eugenicist Katharine? (Has she been around lately?)
Observer,
So you have listed “Negroes”, “whites” and “Asians”. Got any more? How about Australioids?
I would assume you do have more categories since you seem to be suggesting in #503 that there are as many biological races as cultures. Is that really what you are saying?
If so, can you really speak of a group called “whites” when Nordics and Alpines are biologically distinct races? Meanwhile are Mediterraneans white? In your daily contact with other people, what clues do you use to distinguish between members of these groups?
The same questions for Amused Observer.
Let me guess, you think of yourself as a “radical traditionalist” or “third positionist” and love Ezra Pound and Julius Evola.
More demographic profiling of Amused Observer, Awer, Matt etc (just guesses, but I want to see if I’m correct):
– Listen to Blood Axis, Death In June, Sol Invictus, and classical, especially Romantic period
– have ‘evil Spock’ beards
– tattoos that are easily hidden for their jobs
– thirtysomething
– college degree, dropped out of grad school
As I noted before, Observer’s morphing and whimsy haven’t fooled anyone.
What I find most interesting about such beasts is that they give themselves away as in the lower percentiles of human intelligence with their arguments by their general failure to comprehend the implications of their own thought processes. If it were in fact determined that some distinction in average intelligence could be made based on some schema of categorisation, and assuming they fit into one of ‘teh smarter’ categories, what would that mean for them? Nothing. If ‘whites’ are indeed smarter on average than non-whites, it wouldn’t change the IQs of individual whites. Matt would still be dumb (as both he and I agree), and if anything, Observer’s general inability to put together a cogent argument (witness his ADHD-esque subject jumping) makes him a bigger loser for his failure to live up to his skin.
If they’re arguing for some sort of generalisation about superiority vs. inferiority based on intelligence, then both their arguments and their existence don’t bode well for whites’ place on the curve.
Belonging to a generally smarter group doesn’t make you smarter, boys. Being smarter makes you smarter. A newbie mistake, but one to be expected from dumber-than-average individuals, of any group.
PZ, you must cease with your diatribes or we shall have to take your name down.
— the Solutrean Troofers (P.S.Has anyone seen the blond haired blue eyed mummy I misplaced?)
Seriously, these people are somewhat indefatigable and entirely disingenous, so watch for them to disrupt in a variety of ways and to show up in a myriad of disguises.
“So, give us a plan. Give us an idea. Tell us what development that acknowledges differences in average IQ would look like.”
An example was given above, an example no one commented on. Is it helping Botswana that over 90% of their medical doctors are foreigners? They are in dire need of help, with one of the worst HIV epidemies in the world. Are the Cuban and Indian doctors helping? Would you rather they were not there, so that the batswana could “self-develop” better without this sort of neo-colonialism?
In Kenya the small minority of Indians are founding most of the countries businesses and are a crucial part in the country’s effort to move on to the path to further economic growth.
Mauritius, the island off the coast of Africa, have a majority Indian population. Their GDP per capita is $13.5k.
In Uganda the Asian immigrants formed the economic and educational backbone of the nation, until Idi Amin expulsed them in the 1970’s.
In South Africa, there are around 1.1 million Indians, mostly descended from the immigrant workers, who the British brought into the country in mid 19th century, to work in sugar plantations and mines. They, also, fell victims of the Apartheid. Today, economically and educationally, they are climbing the social ladder and today their income per person is already nearly double that of the black African population. 2 percent of the South African population, Indians form 8% of the country’s University graduates.
These are not isolated examples. But more a general rule. Immigrants from India have done well anywhere they have gone. (Certainly lately there have been educated immigrants from Indian upper classes, and these new waves of immigrants are not therefore comparable as they are of a higher social status to start with. I’m speaking more about the earlier, historical waves of immigration.)
And there is a reason I’m using India as an example. The culture in India has it’s problems, especially regards to the position of women in society. And they have dark skin colour.
Many social scientists in Europe like to blame the social and economic failure of ethnic African minorities on “oppressive” social structures that discriminate against them. Generations after they were given equal rights. I’m not saying this doesn’t play some role, as it quite evidently does, but the Indians are quite immune to its effects. And this does raise questions.
The hereditary hypothesis is a logical one. It’s not a nice one, but there is no obligation for the world to be nice and to curtail to our wishes.
Presumably all the attempts to support this hypothesis have been refuted. That, of course, is not true. There is not enough research, nor data. And your say-so doesn’t carry the strenght to change this. The concrete data and research there is, outside of your word games on the fuzzy meaning of the word race, the adoption studies, the twin studies, the IQ-test scores (e.g. of the children of upper class blacks who score below the “trailer park whites), the reaction speed test results (that correlate with IQ/g) and the larger empirical pictures from countries like Botswana, Uganda and Mauritius… these are all pointing in the same direction.
Of the studies, you claim to have been refuted, let’s name just one, the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption_Study, it’s from your country and it’s from 1976-1986 so there should have been ample time to refute it’s results. And it’s from one of the most liberal states in your Union, if I understand correctly. If it was from Mississippi or Alabama I would be inclined to agree with a social and environmental explanation, but here it does not fully work. And it would not apply to children of Indian immigrants who would do fine.
Let me add that I do believe that the Flynn effect is important. The average 82 IQ tested for India is nonsense, and is likely to be closer to the European average of 100. Equally the tested Sub-Saharan average of 70 is far too low, and in (macro and micro) nutritionally, culturally and educationally more “adept” societies should be considerably higher. The support for “neo-colonialism” (I don’t call it that myself) is also very much about this transition period.
So if someone asked what I think of Rushton or Lynn or Jensen and their ilk, yes I have read them, no I don’t agree with the far reaching conclusions, but true I don’t think it’s completely without merit either.
Brownian suspected my own IQ has to be low, because my English is so poor. English is not my native tongue, this is my excuse. I’d prefer, if, instead of the childlish insults, you could debate the issues.
And do not point to upper thread and claim to have answered questions you quite evidently have not. You have rather word played around the fuzzy meanings of the major race categories, and hided behind the fact that they are partly social constructs. That doesn’t say anything specific about population clusters and hereditary traits. Just because the Bushmen of Kalahari are genetically vastly different from the Masai of Kenya, doesn’t mean both groups wouldn’t have average hereditary traits that could be estimated. The word play rather dodges the issue. And I would ask whether you are familiar with the concept of confirmation bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias and consciously try to avoid it?
This may come as a surprise to you, but you are not the only educated person in the world. And there are, shock horror, educated people who disagree with you, based on rationally weighted reasons.
“I’m curious about Awer and Matt.
Do they consider themselves progressive, moderate, paleoconservative, or none of the above?”
The labels are bit different on this side of the pond (in Europe) but here goes: Green, anti nationalism, global solidarity, atheist/agnostic, social liberal, rationalist.
I think the Meredith fans may be the same person.
See posts #395, #420 and #521. Just a hunch.
Is sock-puppetry allowed here? And can the puppets be made of white sheets?
Sockpuppetry isn’t allowed but hard to control. PZ has access to the URL used. White sheets, of course.
Ahem, #530
“I think the Meredith fans may be the same person.”
Poor thinking. The blog’s author, if needed, can confirm the IP addresses are probably thousands of miles apart. I don’t troll.
“More demographic profiling of Amused Observer, Awer, Matt etc (just guesses, but I want to see if I’m correct):
– Listen to Blood Axis, Death In June, Sol Invictus, and classical, especially Romantic period”
You are correct… I do listen to some classical music. Mostly Mozart, Brahms and Prokofiev though.
But generally to 1960’s and 70’s rock music. Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Joan Baez.
Favourite era in popular culture Paris 1920’s.
Some of the people I appreciate: Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Muktharan Bibi, Nelson Mandela, Wole Soyinka… and I have great hopes for Barack Obama.
Quite clearly I must be an evil person, but despite my own short comings I would still like you to consider these words by the great author and intellectual Leo Tolstoy:
“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabrics of their life”.
and…
“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.”
You cannot wish nor decide reality.
To my ever growing shame and worthlessness I used to think the lines you do about this issue of race, populations and the hereditary hypothesis. It takes a really dumb man to abandon knowledge and adopt such vulgar ignorance in its place. They should come and take this trailer away from me, I don’t deserve it.
awer,
The link you provided for that Minnesota study says that the authors of the study report that a biological interpretation is ambiguous at best. It does not sound like that is what you had in mind.
I have some questions about these adoption studies.
How much of a factor was the small African-American population of Minnesota back then? (1.3% in the 1980 census)
What are the results from the parallel investigations done in states with larger African-American populations? (such as Mississippi or South Carolina)
Have the more recent studies in Minnesota shown any changes since the first ten-year study? Attitudes have changed a lot in the last generation.
How much of the factor was the upper-middle-class status of the adoptive parents? What are be the results with adoptive parents who are of the same class as the majority of African-Americans in whichever state?
How does this Minnesota study compare to the studies of white (and American?) children adopted by non-white parents in countries with small white populations? Or in countries where whites have the same low social status as blacks do in the United States?
Finally, do not fall into the trap of thinking that northern U.S. states are not racist. They have long practiced different forms of racism than the South did. Even Minnesota (appears to have) had sundown towns: http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/sundowntownsshow.php?state=MN
Humor FAIL or Drama Queen. Hyperbolic self -deprecation as a way to ingratiate yourself won’t fly here.
BTW, we don’t decide reality, most of us seek empirical evidence and try to be very careful in the way we interpret that data. Sometimes we withhold an opinion because their isn’t enough information either way and sometimes we have to revise previously held opinions when we are presented with good solid evidence that counters them.
Just because you feel you are progressive & can quote Tolstoy doesn’t mean you can use a “get out of jail free” card to display an overt bias, which can be readily described as racist.
Thanks for the bio but I seriously doubt you convinced anyone to abandon their former opinion of you.
1920’s Paris, huh? (more telling than you know…)
And far more uppity!
windy, did you read the BBC article you linked?
Botswana keep clear majority of the doctors they educate. Yet over 90% of their doctors are foreigners. AND they would still need several more doctors. And it can be argued that in Botswana the healthcare inftrastructure situation is better than in any other Sub-Saharan African country outside of South-Africa. This is the scale of the problem.
And you ask: “could there be other reasons?”
Of course. The world, obviously, is very complex. If we leave the Cuban doctors aside for a moment, and concentrate on the case of Botswanan (batswana) doctors, yes braindrain is a problem, but it’s impact isn’t central for Botswana as the number of native medical doctors is very low to start with. So if 10% or 20% of them leave the country, this is not the crucial issue. It goes much deeper.
I did – did you read my comment? If you look carefully, I didn’t argue that brain drain is the cause of Botswana’s problems in particular. However, if you are going to point to doctor shortages as a limit of native intelligence, is “Home Office figures show that 17,620 African doctors and nurses joined the NHS last year” evidence that Africans are more intelligent than native Brits?
So are you arguing that the main thing keeping more native Botswanans from becoming doctors is lack of ability?
More questions for awer (and Matt, Observer, and other “race realists”): Where did you acquire your views on race? Have any particular books or intellectual figures been especially influential? Does your social group share your beliefs? Do you belong to a discussion or study group, either in person or online, that talks about these ideas?
What’s interesting about awer and Katharine is how much they resemble scienceblog bloggers and readers – left of center, support Obama, rationalist – besides their deviation on race/eugenics/hereditarianism.
If they were neofascists, there would be little to ponder. The question is how these racialist ideas are being disseminated within educated, liberal minded, rationalist subcultures.
…continuing from above, especially since Botswana apparently only got its first medical school going a couple of years ago?
Perhaps you would argue that this just shows how poor organisers they are, but if you looked at my second link in the previous comment, Cuba’s doctor population grew by more than 10 times in the last 50 years as a result of political decisions. Is this really the time to write off Botswana as incapable of producing more doctors?
“So are you arguing that the main thing keeping more native Botswanans from becoming doctors is lack of ability?”
…in the needed numbers, yes. It’s far from the only reason. And their ability will raise with better nutrition and better basic education (the Flynn effect), but the numbers do not add up without the hereditary hypothesis. Flynn has admitted as much himself when he speaks of still unknown (entirely hypothetical) environmental reasons. A more working hypothesis does exist, and it is not without supporting evidence. It’s not just one Minnesotan study that possibly points in this direction, as alone it would be weak evidence, but you have another study with similar results, and another… and it piles up. And academic achievement has a strong statistical correlation with IQ, and g. And intelligence (the potential) is largely hereditary, which has been exhaustively proven with twin studies. There is no way out from the chain of reasoning.
A senior professor from my country, a former member of the parliament (in the Green party), travelled in most African countries spending time with the locals, socialising with people from all social classes, staying with strangers, hitchiking etc. At the age 70, a truly remarkable journey he completed over several years, and not without danger. He wrote a book on his experiences and on his studies of Africa, he begins it with these words (unfortunately the book has not been translated into English, so the translation is mine)
“A Gigantic collective lie marks our attitudes towards Africa. For this lie it is characteristic, that everyone lies, and everyone knows, that everyone is lying. And everyone also knows that everyone knows that everyone is lying.”
I would rather follow the conclusions that can help us change our policies in a way that as a result the poor people will have better access to quality health care. This is NOT a top-down solution. I am much in favour of bottom-up developmental politics and the emansipation of African societies. In developmental politics we can find synenergies by helping to hire poor Indians (and other qualified people) to work in Africa. They don’t demand as much pay as a western doctor or engineer would, yet they can earn more than they would in their home country if we help to fund such a system wisely. And they are also better recieved by the local communities. They blend more easily with their dark skin colour. This is not in contradiction with bottom-up approach. Ask the batswana who are recieving health care. It doesn’t take anything away from anyone. Instead it helps, concretely.
We could be in 2059 wondering why there are so few native medical doctors and engineers in Africa. That would be the real tragedy.
We need good policies now. We need to re-think our developmental policies.
The ideologue can howl to the moon of correctness to the rhythm of “racist, racist…” but in the end of the day, if he, drunk from his self-importance, supports policies that do not work, he keeps contributing to the misery of the very people he claims to defend.
Colugo wrote:
Frankly I don’t think this is helpful either. Why are you always dropping these ominous hints in response to some random fool on the internet? If I’m interested in human genetic variation should I get some tattoos so that I’ll fit in your stereotype? (The goatee is going to be difficult ;)
“Why are you always dropping these ominous hints in response to some random fool on the internet?”
Wasn’t trying to be ominous in the slightest. I’m just a little surprised that she didn’t drop in this thread.
Or we could be in pre-1959 Cuba, wondering why there aren’t enough Cuban doctors to provide adequate healthcare to the whole country.
PS Here’s a group of some of those famous Cuban doctors*, these from a relief mission to Guyana. Many of them appear to have significant amounts of African ancestry! How does Cuba manage to educate these incompetents?
(*if you think I’m cherry-picking, look at some other images or consider the proportion of African and mixed ancestry in Cuba as a whole.)
windy: ” “Botswana apparently only got its first medical school going a couple of years ago?”
The Botswanan medical school is potentially great development, and something to keep an eye on. But there have existed, and there do exist opportunities for Africans to get higher education abroad. Many Botswanans do speak English, and the country gained it’s independence in 1966.
“Perhaps you would argue that this just shows how poor organisers they are,”
If you read Meredith, or anyone brutally honest on the history of African independence the lack of organisation, planning and forward thinking is a central problem on all levels of government and society. From top to the grass roots. Aid workers could tell you innumeral anecdotal stories.
“but if you looked at my second link in the previous comment, Cuba’s doctor population grew by more than 10 times in the last 50 years as a result of political decisions. Is this really the time to write off Botswana as incapable of producing more doctors?”
No. And the question is not either or. The right (and crucial) question is can Botswana (and other Sub-Saharan countries) produce more doctors, engineers and other highly qualified workers in the needed numbers?
They didn’t start yesterday, like Castro’s Cuba, they started 50 years ago. They have had time, they have riches to potentially achieve progress.
And the best of them had a headstart on Cuba, or India or China in terms of infrastructure and economy. And they have recieved 2 trillion dollars in foreign aid, while there has been an embargo on Cuba. Africa 50 years ago was of course poor, but not as poor as is often made out to be. You might want to go through the relevant graphs with gapminder (www.gapminder.org)
The best of them were relatively rich tropical countries at the time, with vast natural resources, with potential to lift their populations from poverty. There was great hope and expectation. And all failed.
All failed to a large or even larger extent compared to the expectations at the time. Every single country with not one exception.
Many have afterwards noted that the transition from colonialism to independence should have happened gradually, with the political structures, infrastructure and educated workers in place to run a nation successfully.
We should have been there opening Botswanan medical school in 1966, and not 2006. The leadership and expertise for the Botswanan medical school came from the outside. And that’s something we should have been doing long ago neo-colonialism or not, racist or not. Labels are secondary, results matter.
#547
1.) I grew up in an area that is 50% white/50% negro.
2.) My views on race are based on personal experience.
3.) Re: social group. Yes.
4.) I have a blog.
5.) I voted for Ron Paul in the primaries. In the general election, I held my nose and voted for Chuck Baldwin solely because of his position on immigration.
#533
I’m not a “radical traditionalist” or a “third positionist.” Also, I never bothered to read Evola or Pound. I have a low opinion of ideologues.
TURRRR NIP
Isn’t it odd how liberals deny the existence of race, but insist on celebrating racial diversity?
Observer returns, again with vacuous statements to attempt to show the other side is wrong. Classic avoidance technic, so his inane position isn’t attacked. Little does he know what’s waiting around the corner…
Doesn’t it bother you that everything you say is wrong? Do you think not having even a basic grasp of history helps your credibility?
If you’re really interested in understanding the plight of Sub-Saharan Africa, go read some history, some institutional economics, some more history. For innoculation against teh stoopid you’ve come down with, maybe some population genetics or something.
Then read it again.
Repeat that until you actually begin to understand something.
(Hint- if you do all that, and you still feel tempted to throw out ignorant remarks about how Botswanans can’t become doctors, or think some hypothetical half standard deviation difference in average IQ is a useful or sufficient way to understand S-S Africa’s political and economic problems, you need to go back to the books.)
Nerd,
I’m somewhat amused by how seriously you people take yourselves. You cling to your moral convictions re: race with all the ferocity of holy rollers. I guess I can’t understand how any historically literate person could do so.
Now he is attacking the commentator. He claims he is amused by us, but when we are amused by him he gets upset. Classic case of dingbatus going on. Stay tuned for more invective from our subject.
Again with the religious imagery from the asshole. And the baseless assertion that history proves that people with dark skin are inferior.
As we’ve seen in Zimbabwe, many sub-Saharan countries become kleptocracies. This is a government that maintains the personal wealth and political power of government officials and the ruling class at the expense of the population. Mobutu Sese Seko, president of the former Zaire, is estimated to have stolen $5 billion.
Much of this foreign aid was military aid. Angola has 18 MiG-23 and 25 MiG-21 fighters. (How many are operational is anyone’s guess. Jane’s Information Group believes fewer than 10 Angolan MiGs are still airworthy.)
Between kleptocrats and military aid, not a whole lot of money trickled down for building medical schools or even hospitals.
#531
1.) Yes, I follow American Renaissance, VDARE, Majority Rights, Steve Sailer, etc.
2.) I’m not an ideologue. I believe all religions and secular ideologies (including liberalism and humanism) are ultimately baseless.
3.) I’m familiar with Rushton, Lynn, Harpending, Cochran, Lahn, etc., but not really interested in their work.
I don’t take myself very seriously; I’m kind of a goofball.
But I do take this issue seriously. And yes, it is a moral conviction, arrived at after reading a great deal of history AND a lot of scientific research . . . neither of which supports your position, you know.
And what I see is that whenever a society has tried to use the kind of reasoning about “race” you cling to, great evil has resulted. Human beings have been hurt. That’s true for slavery in the U.S.; European colonialism (everywhere it’s been attempted); genocide in Germany; war atrocities in China under Japan; oppression of Hispanics in the U.S.; internment of the Japanese in WWII; the treatment of the First Nations in the Americas . . . need I go on?
Racism is nothing more than tribalism on the grand scale, using skin color as the primary “flag” of the tribes. And every time we make predictions based on these alleged differences between the “races”, there comes along some individual — and actual, individual human person — who knocks it down.
When the variations among individuals in a given group is greater than the variations among the groups you’ve rather arbitrarily defined (is President Obama black, or white, or both?), do any of these stereotypes hold water? And by the way, this reasoning holds true for gender as well as race.
I’m a red-letter Christian, so to me, our primary societal goal is JUSTICE. That’s what Jesus cared about, so naturally that’s what I care about too. And I don’t see any way that the ideas you espouse will lead to just outcomes.
And by the way, it’s CULTURAL diversity we liberals celebrate.
Leftist Bozo,
I haven’t said anywhere that colored people, uhm, or as you would say, “people of color” (this phrase was popularized in the 1980s), are racially inferior.
For those who are not familiar with the website, Majority Rights is an extremely racist white supremacist website that spews racist pseudoscience and antisemitic conspiracy theories. Scientific racism advocate Jon Jay Ray quit the group because of its virulent antisemitism. American Renaissance is a eugenicist white supremacist organization and website. But founder Jared Taylor is not an antisemite, a minority position within the white supremacist subculture. (If Observer is offended by the term “white supremacist,” I forget what the politically correct euphemism is.)
Jared Taylor, JP Rushton (flagbearer of contemporary scientific racism), and Nick Griffin (BNP) have palled around at American Renaissance conferences. AR is an intersection between scientific racism, white supremacism, and neofascism. Rushton heads the Pioneer Fund, which has all kinds of current and historical eugenicist, neofascist and Nazi connections.
The nativist website VDARE is a halfway house between hardline white supremacism and more milquetoast paleoconservatism (e.g. American Conservative). It has featured the rabid antisemitism of Kevin MacDonald. Derbyshire and Sailer, who are associated with VDARE, are the soft edge of scientific racism. Michelle Malkin is also affiliated with VDARE.
So Observer is a racist but not a neofascist; rather, he’s a paleocon. (Gushing over Pound and Evola are giveaways for “intellectual” neofascism.) And awer is a progressive. Interesting.
For some historical perspective on race in America, read Frank Rich’s essay “White Like Me” in today’s NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/opinion/18rich.html?pagewanted=1&em
Anybody still want to argue that racism leads to just outcomes? Observer, are you listening?
Leigh Williams,
The term “racism” didn’t enter the English language until 1936. “Racism” wasn’t widely regarded as a social pathology in the West until a few generations ago. This insistence on the morality of non-discrimination is an even more recent innovation.
The major advantage of historical literacy is a heightened awareness of the fashionable trends and prejudices of one’s own times. I see little of this amongst liberals and progressives who regard artifacts of a passing phase of their own culture as a universally valid moral principle rather than mere opinion.
Asshole farted;
I haven’t said anywhere that colored people, uhm, or as you would say, “people of color” (this phrase was popularized in the 1980s), are racially inferior.
Oh, forgive me. Negros are intellectually inferior.
The observer is still showing signs of intellectual challenge. The inability to define something and live with those definitions. Because he might be proved wrong. The oily response only show desperation instead of good argument. Stay tuned.
I’m not a paleoconservative.
Now the observer is getting defensive. Will he have the good sense to go away because he is making a fool of himself? That is the question.
“The term “racism” didn’t enter the English language until 1936.”
This smacks of John Best’s “autism didn’t exist before 1943 because the word ‘autism’ didn’t exist before then.”
I am DEAD FECKING SERIOUS:
http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2007/10/autism-best-joh.html
Re: Frank Rich
1.) I’m struck by the way Rich unconsciously portrays Obama’s election as a wonderful example of racial pride and achievement. Whites alone are now forbidden by contemporary racial etiquette to think in such terms.
2.) The same liberals who insist “race doesn’t exist” seem to have little difficulty making racial classifications – how odd.
3.) Obama is merely the latest in a long line of negro leaders – Kwame Nkrumah, Mugabe, Nelson Mandela, Idi Amin, Emperor Bokassa, Mobutu Sese Seko, Jomo Kenyatta, Hastings Banda, etc.
Oh, this is fun!
Psoriasis didn’t get called that until Dr. Ferdinand Ritter Von Hebra used the term to describe the disease in 1841. Did psoriasis not exist before then?
Laser Potato,
The pejorative caricature of 19C race theory as “racism” first emerged during the 1930s in anti-fascist circles. “Black,” of course, was popularized by Malcolm X in the 1960s as a substitute for “negro.” The capitalized “Negro” came into circulation as part of an NAACP campaign in the early twentieth century. “African-American” and “people of color” were popularized in the 1980s.
The Observer is still showing no signs of any balls that might win him the debate. He keeps trying to play defense. He needs to define what he means by race and back it up with data to win. But he appears to be deficient enough morally and intellectually to actually do that. Stay tuned for further developments.
Egalitarianism is a passing fad? Ha. Enlightenment values have been around much longer than a few decades.
Meanwhile, “Observer” has identified three biological races and has not named any more. Maybe he thinks that is the limit. Even if he’s “observing” superficial traits, that’s quite an oversimplification.
I wonder how well he does with this quiz:
http://www.pbs.org/race/002_SortingPeople/002_00-home.htm
1.) That’s a pretty bad strawman, even for you.
2.) READ THE THREAD AGAIN. Race does NOT exist on the biological level, but on the SOCIAL level. THE SOCIAL LEVEL! THE GODDAMNED SOCIAL LEVEL!!!!
3.) Cherry-picking, eh? I could name at least 50 much worse “white” leaders without straining myself were I so inclined, but that would make me no better than you.
Observer,
Do you believe …
– that within “whites,” populations (Nordic, Mediterranean etc.) can be graded on genetic propensity for certain temperaments and cognitive ability, which has resulted in differential collective accomplishments?
– that within various populations, socioeconomic elites are genetically smarter, more industrious, etc than lower classes, down to the underclass; in other words, class stratification is genetic.
– that Jews are a race specializing in parastizing host populations?
Don’t be shy or PC.
*sigh*
I’m still waiting for him to give a rational explanation for his qualification of what equality is
and racism didn’t exist prior to 1930? hilarious. I guess he’s never read Othello
Nonsense. You’re projecting; Rich says nothing of the kind.
RACE IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT. That’s how we use it. It is NOT a scientific construct. I’ve said this twice now, and others have also pointed it out to you. Do try to keep up; your continual harping on the point, which is not the “gotcha” you seem to think, is becoming tedious.
Bush is merely the latest in a long line of caucasian leaders — Hitler, Andrew Jackson, Stalin, Mussolini, Jefferson Davis, Slobodan Milosevic, numerous Popes, Thomas West De la Warr, Abdul Hamid II, various British governors in India (google “famine”) . . .
See how stupid you look?
No, Leigh, you misunderstand. No one’s “insisting” anything. Biological races don’t exist. However, sociological races – defined as socially-constructed (and thus temporally and spatially variable) categories of people who share biologically-transmitted traits that members of different societies consider important – do. See my quotation from Ann Morning above about the social uses and effects of racial categories.
3.) Obama is merely the latest in a long line of negro [now there’s a word you don’t often encounter these days] leaders – Kwame Nkrumah, Mugabe, Nelson Mandela, Idi Amin, Emperor Bokassa, Mobutu Sese Seko, Jomo Kenyatta, Hastings Banda, etc.
…Toussaint L’Ouverture, Jean-Bertrand Aristide (kidnapped), Ellen Johnson Sirleaf,…
He’s the first black US president. That is indeed novel and an achievement.
SC, those points were Observer’s, not mine. I was starting my rebuttal and accidentally hit Post instead of Preview to check my blockquotes.
My rebuttal is at #584.
I did try to post a “sorry” right afterwards, but the software wouldn’t let me (timing was too short).
By the way, here’s Randall Robinson on Aristide’s kidnapping in the context of Haitian history:
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/7/23/randall_robinson_on_an_unbroken_agony
He gave a great talk about it at Harvard Law School last year.
Sorry, Leigh. I was wondering why you were arguing with yourself.
:)
Leigh Williams,
1.)Bullshit. Rich does portray Obama’s election as a racial accomplishment. Liberals tell us over and over again with great pride that he is the “first African-American president.” They have no principled objection to racial pride, race consciousness, racial distinctions, or race advocacy. Their real objection is solely to white people who engage in this type of thinking.
2.) Liberals always emphasize two trivial points:
– The various races shade into each other.
– The boundries between races are socially defined.
Note: This has been known since the days of Blumenbach and Linnaeus.
… and announce with glee that “race doesn’t exist.” Ironically, these very same people then relapse into making racial distinctions: he’s “black,” he’s “white,” she’s “Asian,” in everyday life. That’s one reason why I can’t take them seriously.
3.) Andrew Jackson was a great president.
Jadehawk,
Nice straw man.
The Observer in back trying for snark. And failing. Obvious mental deficiencies.
(But I can’t forgive you, Leigh, for pushing me to respond to the odious “Observer.” I would never have done so had I not thought I was responding to you – though that was stupid on my part, as I should have known you wouldn’t write something like that.)
Evidence that O is too stupid to bother with:
Anyone who could read this thread and suggest that that’s what’s being argued is truly thick. Anyone who (and I suspect this might well be the case) jumps in and starts commenting on a thread like this without reading it doesn’t deserve a response.
I suspect most Cherokees would disagree.
Don’t bother answering, O. You’re ignorant and repulsive, and I don’t have the time to point out all of your errors.
Just go the fuck away.
So, Observer, what’s your opinion of President Jackson’s role in instigating the “Trail of Tears”?
Coincidentally, Mr. Science and I just watched a documentary on Andrew Jackson last night on the History Channel.
Andrew Jackson was a great president in some ways, but his role in massacres, betrayal of Indian peoples (including his own allies), and the Trail of Tears cannot be ignored in evaluating his presidency. These were crimes against humanity.
Not just the Cherokee, but the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Creek, and Seminole tribes view him as a criminal. Many Indians avoid twenty-dollar bills for that reason.
You bet your ass we object to it. When the dominant social group, which has been in power since the formation of the country, starts whining about being “oppressed”, we think that’s unconscionable. And, as I pointed out very clearly to you, we do use the word race to describe a SOCIAL CONSTRUCT. We believe it’s an EVIL SOCIAL CONSTRUCT. We love to see members of oppressed groups overcoming stereotypes and entering the mainstream of our society. You, on the other hand, seek to perpetuate those stereotypes and injustices. WE BELIEVE THAT IS EVIL. And if that evil shoe fits you, we intend to make you wear it.
Those two points aren’t trivial, as this entire thread proves. I’ve explained this to you now, twice, and I’m done explaining it. You’re not only evil, you’re a moron.
We DO take you seriously, however — and we will do all in our power to ensure that you are never again able to institutionalize your bigotry into our society and our laws.
Already refuted. You’re a moron.
Go away for a bit and come back to find more idiocy. I haven’t paid complete attention to all of the posts, but I wondered if anyone had brought up the fact that people have done better on intelligence tests if they are better fed – good nutrition has been a problem in Africa and other third-world countries (and parts of America as well). Add in all the infrastructure problems already mentioned, it’s no wonder that Africa is lagging behind the developed nations (ever wonder why they are called that?).
I did have a challenge – let’s try to count all the racists and see how many of them are doctors. It would surely be as good a tool for analysis as the “doctors in Botswana” bit.
Finally, although it had been answered – would I say that the founding fathers were racists? Sure. They were, to one degree or another. It was pretty much indoctrinated into Europeans by that point. I’m not sure what that is supposed to prove. A lot of people throughout history have been ignorant, or bigoted, or uneducated, or superstitious…name your poison. So what?
As for why we think humans are equal (in terms of how we should treat them and what respect as human beings, and legal rights – etc) – we are all the same race: Homo sapiens sapiens. As for judging people by skin color – I propose length of nose hair. Easier than blood type, for sure.
jack lecou, what do you think you are achieving with your insults?
I never said hereditary intelligence (or temperament) were the only factors. That indeed would be seriously foolish. I have studied African history as part of developmental studies. It is from reading and studying over the course of several years, that I have arrived in these views. With absolutely no ideological motivation. Very much to the contrary, because I too, would wish it to be like you believe it is.
We can take one trait here, that we can prove to be largely hereditary and which has strong statistical social correlations. Testosterone.
In relatively homogenous populations in the west (culturally, economically etc.), studies have found that higher testosterone correlates with higher sex drive, higher sexual activity, stronger sexual desire and higher promiscuity (also aggression but that is another debate). It is only logical to assume there is some societal causation. You can try to explain it away as merely coincidental if you want to.
It is a hereditary trait. And we can estimate the average of this trait among varying population clusters. Among both men, and women.
The estimated chance of HIV-infection in vaginal intercourse is often quoted as 1/1000. Now this may vary between different populations and different mutations of the virus, but there is eerie silence over the debate how so many African countries went from couple of cases of AIDS to 20-30% of the population being HIV-infected in just couple of decades.
Based on the African AIDS crisis World Health Organization feared the same would happen in poor Asian societies where the people have no access to health care or contraceptives, or if they do using contraceptives often carries a social stigma, and where the position of women in the society is far from free and equal. The same cultural and socio-economic factors that were thought to be behind the African AIDS crisis. But no such AIDS crisis has developed in any Asian country to this day, with such high numbers, while it has happened in majority of the Sub Saharan communities.
This does ask questions. If you have answers you might want to tell us. I do have a few hypothesis, based in science and rational thought. Not nice views. But I must have missed when the world promised to be nice and biologically universal. I leave that to religions and other belief systems.
I’m a secular human being, and to best of my ability, I try to follow the evidence.
They may amuse you and comfort you, but your insults do not count as arguments.
Oh, deity-of-your-choice on a friggin’ pogo stick. Awer, did you honestly bring up that “black folks are higher-sexed” canard? Evidently you don’t care how ridiculous you look!
And for your information, AIDS is a huge problem in Vietnam, an epidemic in India . . . here is some information so you can remedy your ignorance:
http://www.time.com/time/asia/photoessays/aids_in_asia/
http://www.avert.org/aids-asia.htm
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2008/12/20081214141191450.html
Yes, the highest numbers are in Africa. Really, is that so surprising? The Catholic Church and other Christian missionaries bear a large part of the blame, as do foreign aid organizations that don’t emphasize supplying condoms (Americans, I’m looking at you). A general lack of medical care and education efforts also are to blame.
You say you base your views on “science and rational thought”. How odd, then, that all the rest of us haven’t reach those conclusions. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you’re looking for reasons to excuse or rationalize some racism that lives in your heart?
“eerie silence”? WTF? Are you claiming there has been some sort of conspiracy to deny that Africans fuck?
If you look at Pubmed there are hundreds of articles about the transmission of HIV. Some of them argue that it’s actually non-sexual transmission which has been neglected in Africa. And as long as we are talking about genetic causes why not mention the Duffy antigen which apparently makes many people of African descent more susceptible?
If logic and empirical evidence (such as hereditary testosterone and the strong correlations) look ridiculous to you, I do NOT care. I care about the evidence.
You cite the socio-economic factors such as lack of contraceptives and lack of access to health-care as contributing to the African crisis, and if you read my post, of course I agreed with this. BUT in many poor Asian societies these same socio-economic factors are prevalent. Therefore WHO initially feared a crisis of similar proportions could happen in Asia, but to this day it has not realised, and today experts think it never will on such scale.
As for your evidence you gave a link to photographs of Asian AIDS victims and mentioned Vietnam. Vietnam have a population of 85 million people. There are estimated to be 200,000 HIV-positive people in Vietnam. Approx one in 400 people, 0.25%. This is an epidemic, but by a factor of one thousand a lesser ecidemic than in many Sub-Saharan African countries.
You see, you didn’t offer any evidence to make me re-consider my views. This is the bottom line. You may try the social pressure trick with your empty accusations of racism, but I am beyond that.
If you have concrete evidence and arguments, please, post them. But don’t be a juvenile. It’s pointless and achieves nothing. Only makes you look childlish in my eyes and makes me wonder how strongly deep down you yourself believe in your arguments if you prefer to substitute personal remarks for them.
The next time anyone complains that the regulars of this blog dismiss alternate points of view with nothing more than insults, I think I’ll point to this thread, and how patiently and substantively folks have dealt with the explicit racists.
Awer, I have done work in southern Africa and know something about testosterone, HIV epidemiology, and African cultures. You don’t know what you are talking about; your rhetoric is a mishmash of Rushton and the usual suspects. And your conclusions are fanciful, to put it kindly.
I shudder to think that you are at all representative of the Scandinavian (Swedish?) developmental community. I certainly hope note.
Awer, explain to me this: why do sub-Saharan African populations generally have LOWER testosterone than white Westerners?
windy, you have been a quality poster, and I don’t think the word f.. strenghtens your latest contribution.
The non-sexual transmission argument would equally (or more strongly) apply to Asians, so it won’t explain the difference. Far majority of the infections in Africa are from hetero-sexual intercourse.
Duffy antigen can be a factor, and there are others, but they either, based on current understanding, don’t go very far in explaining the scale of the epidemic.
The UN study on Botswana found that both men and women had multiple partners. What I mean with eerie silence is that, if I openly proposed in academic circles that let’s study this more in detail, that we have to do it, it’s the central question, I would be socially stigmatized.
How common is sexual intercourse between adult men and 10-15 year old girls in Botswana and other Sub-Saharan African countries? This is just one question among many. How common is anal heterosexual intercourse in societies that value purity and virginity of the woman? You want to stick your hands into the mud of this world, and really try to understand it? I do. Ideology is no substitute for rationalism. We have to get to the bottom of the things to understand the challenges Sub-Saharan African societies face. And to plan our developmental policies accordingly and try to help to guide the communities accordingly. We can’t make Africa change. They have to do it bottom-up, but we can be of crucially assistance. And to be of assistance we need to understand the reality of the situation. And “that is not a nice view” is then not an argument.
It is entirely possible that we can be in 2059 where we are now, only that excessive population growth and environmental degradation have made matters worse. That is a serious reality.
Awer in #597:
“from couple of cases of AIDS to 20-30% of the population being HIV-infected in just couple of decades”
But this is less surprising when you learn that HIV developed in Africa, and that it’s been around for about a century.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7646255.stm
Meanwhile, you seem to be conflating reported early cases of AIDS (“a couple”? Really?) with the actual rate of HIV infection of the time. Do not assume that every case was diagnosed back in the early 1980’s.
And as for your claim about horny Africans, colonial urbanization is looking like a more realistic explanation.
Meanwhile, China faces growing rates of HIV infection, unfortunately.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=aVhQ53Eqid.g&refer=asia
And how does all this relate to your claims of biological determinism?
“Ideology is no substitute for rationalism. We have to get to the bottom of the things to understand the challenges Sub-Saharan African societies face. And to plan our developmental policies accordingly and try to help to guide the communities accordingly.”
Nice words, awer. I agree with them. But the Galtonian prattle of dabblers like yourself, and of professional malefactors like Rushton, won’t help anyone.
Answer my question about testosterone levels. Are the empirical facts consistent with the scenario you’ve tried to persuade us of?
“Awer, explain to me this: why do sub-Saharan African populations generally have LOWER testosterone than white Westerners?”
They don’t. The malnourished part of the population could have. Those suffering from infectious diseases could have. Many of the studies were done on elderly populations or other restricted samples like the Bushmen of Kalahari.
Common view is that the testosterone levels in healthy adults are approx. 15% higher than those of “white” westerners.
I never said testosterone was the only factor, it is one among many. And there is complex causation between biological and cultural factors. Sometimes cultural factors can supress biological factors, like in islamist societies that have comparatively lower infection rates, because pre-marital sex and promiscuity carry such enormous social weight.
Polygyny is the major contributing factor to the African HIV epidemic.
It would be against rationalism not to consider possible biological, hereditary traits that can contribute to the phenomenon. Especially when the correlation is strong, and logical.
Please, Colugo, tell us about your research, but you are not the only person who has travelled in the world, or done research in Africa.
It is the content of your arguments I will consider not your say-so.
Awer, when you post empty rhetoric about testosterone levels, without offering any evidence, you should expect to be called out for racism. Your hypothesis seems to be that the black people of Africa, being so oversexed and all, have fucked themselves into an AIDS epidemic. When you make outrageous claims like that, you need to back them up with evidence. So far you haven’t offered anything other than assertions. I haven’t seen any “concrete arguments” from you, much less any reference to scientific publications that support your views.
I offered an alternative hypothesis. I posted just exactly the same amount of evidence you posted. So why, tell me, am I more “childish” than you?
As I have repeatedly said, I believe racism is a great evil, and that racists are both blind and wicked. Not to mention wrong. I know of NO scientific evidence that contradicts my view, and I ASSERT that historical evidence overwhelming supports my views.
So we’re at an impasse. Frankly, I doubt very much that you and I can reach any sort of rapprochement. I hope you find yourself completely out of sync with your compatriots in whatever Scandinavian country unfortunate enough to claim you as a citizen.
“Many of the studies were done on elderly populations or other restricted samples like the Bushmen of Kalahari.”
You mean populations living traditional lifestyles? What inappropriate choices of study populations: those with subsistence strategies, culture, and marriage patterns similar to their ancestors thousands of years ago. Much better to study those with novel diets and other factors that can affect steroid hormone production and metabolism.
(And do you have any knowledge of the age profile of testosterone levels in these populations? I do. But it doesn’t appear that you do. )
Actually, I’m interested in your research. What is your home country? Which projects have you worked on? Can you name any colleagues I may have heard of? I’m skeptical that you are who you say you are.
“Meanwhile, you seem to be conflating reported early cases of AIDS (“a couple”? Really?) with the actual rate of HIV infection of the time. Do not assume that every case was diagnosed back in the early 1980’s.”
That was proverbial. We have gone from thousands of HIV-positive to thirty million hiv-positive in Sub-Saharan Africa. The general view is that up until mid-late 1970’s AIDS was rare in Africa and the world. It is estimated that in 1980 there were 100k-300k cases of HIV world wide and that is when the virus had started to spread. By mid 1990’s HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa had become catastrophic.
The western agencies are also to blame. We should have acted firmly in the 1980’s. Your president at the time was one of the main culprits.
how quaint. another dimwit making an ass of himself by calling out fallacies incorrectly
I’m still waiting on an reasoned explanation for your categorization of equality
possible, but how exactly does that relate to the rest of your argument? Is polygyny hereditary now? how does that explain the FLDS or Chinese concubines/second wifes?
More personal remarks, I wish you misery and failure, I doubt you are who you say you are, you are a racist. That’s staggeringly dull. I would have liked to hear concrete arguments.
Our brains are wired for self-justification, group-thought and social/group identification. As long as you keep arguing to justify and defend your identity, your views, your peer group and views masquerading as values, generally, everything you identify with, you cannot escape the circural thought that confirmation bias causes.
When you substitute defending views for defending your views, and realise and analyse your own social-identification under different views and paradigms, and take a step back, to view things from a distance and realise how rationalism is in constant battle against emotional patterns that try to overtake our reasoning, only then you can attempt to be a logical social scientists, and even then you will fail, but still it’s far more rational than thinking in a loop. Neuropsychology will shed more light on this, and it will be one of the stories of this century.
For the moment you can go on justifying the moral and nice views, without paying attention to the question, that why a random world would have brought upon such a biological evolution-stops-at-the-neck balance.
Couple of quotes, from the most famous philosopher of the 20th century:
“If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.”
The myth of hereditarily equal average intelligence and hereditarily equal average sexual drive and hereditarily equal average aggression among different population groups.
“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin — more even than death…. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.”
You are afraid of looking into the pit of hell of hereditary sciences and studies and logical reasoning, and afraid of even admitting to yourselves what you see, nevermind having the courage to tell it to your peers who would immediately castigate you, not with arguments, but with stigmatisation, isolation and other personal attacks.
This, my friends, is not science. Nor rational. That is the mammalian brain in action.
More or less failing like everyone, the thinking man has to attempt to raise above it. So that reason really can be free, and merciless to established paradigms that are founded on very shaky science. It is not a leap of faith to look in the direction evidence and reason are pointing, and it’s not immoral, it’s the social code in your brain telling you “Don’t look!”.
And that is what this discussion comes down to. I wish you all luck on the journey to realising this.
Then how do you explain all those published academic studies on HIV transmission in Africa? Including studies on sexual behavior?
Why is the epidemic then worst in East/South Africa, and not in West Africa where the most polygynous societies are?
(This also contradicts some things you said earlier. You seem to be confusing polygyny and promiscuity.)
Here’s an article from the Lancet, ‘Confessions of a condom lover’, which discusses these questions that you claim academics don’t dare to discuss. The author thinks that the risk factor is that both men and women commonly have more than one steady relationship at a time – not a shockingly high number of sexual partners, or a high incidence of polygyny.
You seem to think that the most important question here is, are there adaptive differences that manifest in sexual behavior between human populations? But why on earth? It’s a different question from what is the best way to change sexual behavior in a given population.
>>>The question is how these racialist ideas are being disseminated within educated, liberal minded, rationalist subcultures.
I dont really deserve to be grouped with awer, Im not fit to shine the guy’s pocket protector. My opinions on the matter arent well developed so ive stayed completely out of the development/IQ debate. Looking on my bookshelf, since you asked, Dawkins “selfish gene”, E.O. Wilson “Sociobiology”, “Consilience”, Dennett “Freedom Evolves”. Charles Murray “Human Accomplishment” (A-HA!), S.J.G. “Pandas Thumb”.
Regarding all the scientific racists you posted about, Ive read Derbyshire. He’s a hoot I think, full of confirmation bias and far too ungenerous to the potential for human progress. If you keep that in mind (and have one of your own), though, I think he’s well worth reading for the generalist. Refreshing to find someone who truly does not care what names people call him. Hell, he calls himself a mild racist.
Colugo, you posted that question completely without irony. Mildly disturbing, though unsurprising. I can imagine you thinking “Drat, we’ve taken over academia, what else do we have to do?” Did you mention you were from Canada? Someone here did, anyway, if so, I think you might find some allies in the Canadian gov’s human rights commission. Pointing out less than pleasant traits about one of the worlds religions (the peaceful one) will get you hauled before the thoughtcrime hunters. Perhaps you could convince them to expand their scope a bit. It’d be for the greater good.
People ought to be able to pursue science as it takes us and we shouldnt let our wishes about how the world ought to be stand in the way. When pursuing unpleasant questions so heavy with history care must be taken. My weariness with The Prevailing Liberal Mindset (as opposed to the Classical) gets the best of me so Im not the best example of that, but another poster on here seems well meaning, well educated, and certainly well mannered. In the end I thought his arguments were largely well debated with only a minor sprinkling of namecalling. All to the good.
If race were a social construct, then our new president would be black.
Awer, I beg of you, read this article:
http://www.statesman.com/life/content/life/stories/other/01/18/0118sifuentes.html
I want you to confront the outcome of your reasoning. Tell me, is this the kind of world you want?
Then tell me, which of us is it, who, “offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, [accepts] it even on the slightest evidence”.
What you’re espousing here isn’t science. It’s bigotry dressed up in fancy words. You’re looking for a pretext, a fig leaf you can use to cover up and excuse your desire to marginalize the “other”.
There is only one race, the human race. I am an American, and I “hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”.
You may sneer at my “values”, but by God, I have them, and I will defend them against the forces of evil to my last breath.
The notions you espouse are evil and lead to evil outcomes. All the sophistry and fancy words in the world won’t change the hard truth about you: You are a bigot.
I don’t know if this was directed at me. But it is quite funny. I have done some work in sexual behavior of nonhuman species and even there I don’t have the luxury of assuming that measured differences in some behavioral variable neatly reflect genetic differences! It would be a lot easier if I could.
Matt: “…the thoughtcrime hunters. Perhaps you could convince them to expand their scope a bit.”
Get off the cross. There isn’t room for both Jesus and you up there.
oops, blockquote fail.the first sentence was the only one that was supposed to go into quotes
Well, the tribunal was merciful enough to find him not guilty of Islamophobia. Perhaps im jumping at shadows.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/oct/08101011.html
Actually, I think the Steyn investigation was stupid and not worthy of a liberal democracy like Canada. But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about your interpreting an interesting sociological question (the spread of racialist ideas in liberal rationalist circles) as an Orwellian witchhunt.
awer-
Let me see if I can get your latest thesis straight.
Point A) Africa has an AIDS problem because of a genetic predisposition to high testosterone levels. That is: S-S Africans have uniquely high testosterone levels. This trait is hereditary. The high testosterone levels have caused or contributed to the scale of the AIDS problem. And social factors alone are insufficient to explain the situation.
Point B) Researchers are refusing to investigate this, because it would upset their liberal sensibilities.
So lets go through the posts where you’ve presented ‘evidence’ for these assertions:
This is fine up until “It is only logical to assume some societal causation”. That sentences doesn’t seem to refer to anything. Societal causation for what?
I mean, evidently we’re supposed to have been offended somehow by the first sentences, that high testosterone = higher sex drive, maybe even higher aggression. But there’s nothing in particular wrong with that – I’m not an expert, but it seems reasonable enough.
And then presumably there a lot of societal factors that might affect testosterone levels. Who knows: Video games, diet, underwear styles. Probably dozens of genes that affect it too. That’s all pretty unoffensive.
So here’s where you really start going off the rails, as usual.
No doubt testosterone levels are a genetically influenced trait, in the sense that there might be genes that, all else equal, cause individuals with those genes to have somewhat higher or lower levels. But it’s also influenced even more by other factors, like diet, pre-natal environment, etc., etc.
It’s NOT a hereditary trait like green eyes or whether you have innie or outie sex parts (to the extent that eye color and sex are even hereditary traits…)
Since we have established that testosterone levels are not such an obvious hereditary trait, this part just doesn’t make any sense. Sure, we could measure testosterone levels. But we wouldn’t be measuring the presence of a “hereditary trait”. We’d just be measuring testosterone levels.
To investigate the existence and effect of the underlying hereditary trait, you’d then have to painstakingly control for the multitude of other factors that will effect your raw testosterone measurements, trace back through family trees, etc.
Then, even if you find one gene, and start to look at its prevalence in African populations, you still can’t draw any conclusions about its effect on AIDS, because there are probably dozens or hundreds of other genes that also effect testosterone levels one way or another.
You change topics up ahead, so lets do the score so far:
Point A: -10 points. The attempt was made, but utter failure to establish high testosterone levels as a hereditary trait, let alone one possessed by S-S Africans, or having any influence on the AIDS crisis. Points subtracted for an obviously infantile understanding of heredity and genetics, which casts doubt on any further conclusions.
Point B: 0 points. No evidence presented.
People having sex. It’s possible to have a lot of sex over a couple of decades. Probably a lot of iffy blood transfusions and such in there too. I think that pretty much covers it. And I doubt there’s been any “eerie silence”. People with brains larger than a peanut probably understand all of this without being told, so there’s not much need to talk about it.
To the extent that the problem grew larger and faster in S-S Africa than in say, Seattle, there were obviously some behavioral differences in terms of how often and with how many other people everyone had sex (and just how). But that’s all pretty easily explained in the realms of the cultural and social and historical, not the genetic.
0 points
As has pointed out, many Asian countries do have staggering AIDS crises. Mostly not as bad as Africa, it’s true, but then, none are quite as poor either. The difference is easily explained by cultural, historical and economic factors.
0 points
Irrelevant, mindless posturing. 0 points
————–
Score so far:
Point A: -10 points.
Point B: 0 points.
Next post:
There are no ‘hereditary testosterone or strong correlations’. It’s becoming increasingly clear that you do not ‘care about the evidence’. You certainly haven’t presented any so far, but lets move on and see what this post has in store… (0 points)
This is handwaving an awful lot away. Some Southeast Asian countries have done a LOT of public health work, condom distribution and so forth. There are also cultural factors in terms of willingness to actually use the condom, etc.
You can’t just assert that Asian countries also have some problems with lack of condoms and access to health care, you actually have to quantify the factors in the different countries, and about a thousand others, and their relative contributions to the problem, and then show how there’s still a remainder at the bottom that we have to explain with a genetic factor. (0 points)
Actually, it’s about 280,000. But nevermind. See above.
Also, infection rates in Thailand, and probably Vietnam and elsewhere in SE Asia, have declined dramatically over the last decade or two thanks to concerted public health efforts. Whether due to similar factors, or some other factor, infection rates are starting to fall off in places like Kenya and Zimbabwe. They’re on the rise in Eastern Europe. (I’m sure it’s genetic. 0 points
You’re beyond a lot of things. I suspect you’re already far beyond evidence too, but we’ll see. (Mindless posturing. 0 points)
(More mindless posturing. 0 points)
———————————–
Score so far:
Point A: -10 points
Point B: 0 points
The word “fuck”? You don’t like the word fuck? I actually think that it DID strengthen windy’s post somewhat, not that he or she cares, or cares whether you think they’re a “quality poster”. (Mindless posturing. 0 points)
Why in the universe would it apply “equally”. That seems very unlikely. And why would it apply “more strongly”. Evidence please. I’m sure you’ve quantified all these factors.
And of course, even if the majority of infections are from heterosexual intercourse (fucking!), that doesn’t go anywhere toward your thesis – you have to actually show that 1) the problem is because of fucking 2) the fucking that caused the problem wouldn’t have occurred without high testosterone levels 3) there are uniquely fucking high testosterone levels at all, 4) the high testosterone levels are due to a unique fucking genetic factor or factors possessed by S-S Africans. (0 points)
They don’t have to go very far. But you do have to account for ALL the factors, you can’t just dismiss some because you think they’re small. There are lots of little factors, and they add up (or, really, multiply). (0 points)
Socially stigmatized for studying the culture of multiple partners in Botswana? I highly doubt that.
Socially stigmatized for leaping to wild conclusions about some kind of genetic, racial origin for that culture? Yeah. And I wouldn’t blame your colleagues for thinking you’re a fool.
(0 points)
Those might be useful questions to ask. But they don’t necessarily have anything at all to do with race or genetics, and do nothing for your thesis. (0 points)
MORE mindless posturing. (0 points)
Indeed. There are serious problems in the world, that need serious solutions. One of the reasons it’s seriously important to discredit ignorant, unserious racist fucks like yourself. (0 points)
“Common view”? What is that? Show us the evidence. (0 points)
You’ve said it’s a factor, and provided no evidence so far to back it up. So far all we’ve got is your gut feeling that the other factors couldn’t POSSIBLY be enough. (0 points)
A factor probably. You’ve presented no evidence that it is THE factor. And polygyny is cultural. What’s it got to do with your thesis? (0 points)
If the correlation were either strong or logical you might have a point. So far, you’ve not shown that it’s either. (0 points)
‘Research in Africa’ certainly doesn’t qualify you to make judgments about biology, which you show evidence of being relatively clueless about. (Mindless posturing, 0 points)
Right back at you, awer. You’re not doing so well so far. In fact, your arguments consist almost entirely of your say-so. (Mindless posturing, 0 points)
—————————-
Score:
Point A: still -10
Point B: still 0
Nothing to do with the thesis. (0 points)
You’ve been offered a lot more than you’ve presented. Your dogmatic adherence to your own ignorant position is earning you some much deserved insults. (Mindless posturing, 0 points)
Rambling, unsupported accusations of group-think. (0 points)
“Evolution-stop-at-the-neck”. If anyone needed any MORE evidence that you’re utterly clueless about biology, that’d do nicely. (I’m tempted to deduct some more for that, but 0 points)
There is no such myth, or belief. The only myths in operation here are YOUR myths that intelligence and sex drive are sufficiently strongly genetically linked that such links can have any influence above the noise of culture and environment, and that Sub-Saharan Africa represents a sufficiently distinct “population group” at all. (0 points)
We’ll look anywhere the evidence takes us. But forgive us if we don’t see your hallucinations. (0 points)
More rambling, evidence-free, accusations of group-think. (0 points)
——
Total score:
Point A: -10 points.
Point B: 0 points.
awer: FAIL.
And JACK LECOU rides in on his (whichever color he prefers) dashing steed and routs the forces of evil with his tremendous LANCE OF LOGIC, thus WINNING THE THREAD.
Huzzah for Jack! Good show!
Jack also wins the heart of the Fair Maiden. Well, to be frank, I’m not a maiden, but virginity is highly overrated anyway, n’est-ce pa? On the other hand, I am VERY fair, so perhaps that’s good enough.
I do so swoon over a man with a BIG brain.
No disrespect to Mr. Science, peacefully sleeping a few feet away, and also possessed of an exceedingly large brain.
But Jack, you’ve won my intellectual heart, so to speak, within the bounds of this thread. I’ll look out for more posts from you anon.
(Thank you, Leigh. And I’ll take blue. But I haven’t decided which species. Or phylum.)
It is possible that I used the term misogyny wrong. What I ment was simultaneous relationships with multiple partners, by both sexes, as studied by the UN.
As for countries outside of Africa that have high HIV rates. Haiti tops the list, with more HIV-infections than in Vietnam (nevermind as percentage of the population), but that of course, is just another coincidence. How curious that the coincidences point in the same direction. Must be another coincidence.
jack lecou’s posts are mostly swearing, emotion, personal remarks, so not worthy of a reply even if there are couple of sound arguments somewhere in between the lines. I didn’t see them from all the anger he is expressing.
As for the topics that are a no go area, windy, in the study of the spread of HIV in Africa. It isn’t restricted to hereditary traits. Cultural relativism is a highly dominant paradigm on this side of the pond, and also in USA I have understood. Just to take one example, and to quote a highly established figure, so to show that I am not making this up:
“Discussion of African beliefs in witchcraft is taboo in aid agencies, as nobody wants to reinforce ill-informed stereotypes. Unfortunately, political correctness gets in the way of making policy, as conventional public health approaches may not work if people do believe that witchcraft causes illness and turn to traditional healers.” -(World Bank economist) William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden, named one of the most important books of 2006 by The Economist and Financial Times
You won’t find a substantial research on African witchcraft from the past 40 years. On it’s prevalence and it’s social and cultural impact. You get clips like from Niger Delta where thousands of children aged 2-12 have been abandoned by their parents, hundreds have been murdered, and tens of thousands more tortured to drive away evil spirits because of the re-appearing and growing belief in witches. Especially child witches.
You won’t either find studies how prevalent adult male young teen girl relationships are in the HIV infected area, or how common heterosexual anal sex is in societies that mystify woman’s purity and virginity. You won’t find reliable rape statistics. Or how widespread is the use of child prostitutes, we know they are there on the streets, many of them AIDS orphans. But we don’t know the scale of the problem.
As for “multiple partners”.. the numbers are missing. How many sexual relationships has a Botswanan man/woman had by the age of 30? We don’t know.
Go on if you are in the industry, try to seek funding and support to research these questions and more. Let’s see where your career heads then.
Finally, Colugo, I don’t know how long you have been in the field, but you don’t find a more harneded group of “realists” than those who have spent years in field work in Africa and opened their eyes to the reality. Most keep quiet of their views in public. Many get burnout. Many change fields of profession. Everyone started as an idealist.
The stigmatisation and professional isolation of those who think incorrectly – and thus the general silence in voicing such views, which many more people hold than you would think, will contribute to our failure to understand Africa, and the nature of the problems that keep the continent undeveloped and backwards. And the failure to understand will contribute to the failure to aid the continent concretely, something in which we have failed for decades.
So how about, if for a change, I accuse you, and the establishment that shares your mindset, of contributing to the problem?
But Awer, don’t you see that you’re describing a completely different problem from the one we started out discussing?
You’re describing SOCIETAL problems. Nowhere in this last post do you even begin to touch on the kinds of issues that are of genetic heredity. You’re describing the kinds of foolishness that arise from poverty, ignorance, hysteria, and an entrenched cultural bias towards superstition; in fact, just exactly the same kinds of problems that led to lynching blacks in the United States. Just exactly the same kinds of gender and power imbalances that led to widespread miscegenation in the U.S. Just the same kind of oppression of women that means we don’t have reliable rape statistics for the U.S. prior to, say, fifty years ago.
These are cultural issues, not race or genetic issues.
We’re in different territory and having an entirely different discussion now. I see that you might have problems with those who say, “Well, that’s a cultural issue, and we don’t want to be cultural imperialists, so we’ve just got to leave it alone.”
NONE of us, as far as I can tell, has a problem with rejecting that limitation on scholarly research.
Why drag race into it? If you’re stating your real problem now, what you’re faced with is cultures rooted in poverty, ignorance, and superstition. Hell, I can locate plenty of those for you right here is the U.S., peopled entirely with white folks who are just as irrational and superstitious as anybody in Africa, and old white men just as busy fucking young white girls. And yes, we struggle with cultural relativity in dealing with them, too, because they throw up their bogus religion as a shield from prying eyes.
This is actually the first time you’ve used the word “misogyny”, which means hatred of women. The word for multiple wives is “polygyny”, and for multiple husbands, “polyandry”. “Polygamy” simply means a simultaneous plurality of wives and husbands, so that might be the word you’re looking for. (All irrelevant to the thesis though, so 0 points)
I assume this is all supposed to be “wink wink, nudge nudge, lots of BLACK people in Haiti, eh governor?”
Well, there’s no coincidence. For one thing, many of the long term cultural factors (attitudes about sex and marriage, etc) probably carried over from old world to new. And there’s no mystery with the social/historical factors. S-S Africa is a poor, problem-ridden place. Haiti is a poor problem-ridden place. This could be because ‘black’ people have a genetic predisposition to being poor and problem-ridden. OR it could have something to do with the fact that the people of the Black Race (the social construct) have been systematically fucked by colonial powers like the Spanish, British, French, Italian, Dutch, American, Soviet, Chinese, and god-knows-who-else for nigh four or five hundred years.
I really fail to see how you’ve managed to isolate all the hellish and far-ranging effects of the latter to reach your conclusion that the former is the only possibility (nevermind it’s unlikeliness biologically). (0 points)
They’re actually entirely anger free, though some swearing I’ll cop to. And the arguments are all sound.
Not that I’m surprised to see an ad hominem fallacy from you. Might even be your soundest argument yet… (0 points)
With all due respect for Easterly (and he ain’t exactly infallible), that’s a pretty sweeping generalization. In many situations it’s probably not important. In others, the bureacracies of some aid agencies might be being a little too polite. Not evidence of cultural relatism, and not evidence at all for your thesis that black people are sexed up and stupid. (0 points)
Again, if true, and to the extent that witchcraft is a problem, the lack of research is a problem. (I really doubt there’s as little as you say.) But it’s not evidence of anything but a likely shortage of research funds. (0 points)
Now this is just lies. These kind of sexual behavior studies are common even in places that AREN’T facing a sexually transmitted disease pandemic. Now, I could definitely imagine that they are very hard to carry out in war, poverty and disease torn parts of Africa, and particularly difficult in the face of various taboos and cultural sensitivities. So the data might be in short supply, but that’s par for the course. Not evidence of more liberal group-think. (0 points)
Total fail. Field workers getting burnt out isn’t any kind of evidence for a genetic link to testosterone or IQ. (0 points)
The stigmatization of ignorant assholes who are too lazy to face the real problems, and instead want to use race as a scapegoat, is entirely justified. (0 points)
Accuse away. Doesn’t change the fact that you’re an ignorant fool. (0 points)
On a general note, although I sometimes doubt awer’s credentials, there’s an element of frustration and impatience that certainly rings true of a burnt out field worker.
Part of this is lost perspective:
It’s only been fifty years since some countries in S-S Africa gained independence. Much less for some – Zimbabwe, for example, didn’t hold its first election until 1979 or 1980, after the ZANU and ZAPU fought a long civil war with the white Rhodesian government. And, again taking Zimbabwe as an example, the political legacy of colonialism is obviously still alive and kicking.
It’s been less than 20 years since the Soviets, Americans and Chinese stopped meddling in (and screwing up) African politics. If they have stopped. And some misguided economic imperialism is ongoing.
And now there’s an AIDS pandemic, and the persistent legacy of decades of corruption, looting, war and economic stagnation to deal with.
The point is, these are all really big problems, and 50 years – really more like 10 or 20, if that – is really a very short time scale, historically speaking. It’s disappointing that Zimbabwe or Botswana don’t look like Sweden, or even Taiwan or Argentina yet. But really not that surprising.
It certainly shouldn’t be enough to make us start grasping at weird pseudo-scientific racism straws.
awer,
Now, from my research the chances of getting AIDS through unprotected vaginal intercourse with HIV positive person is 1 in 500. So, let p be the chance of NOT getting AIDS through such an action. So p= 1- 1/500 = 0.995.
Now, let’s say you have sex with such a person 500 times. Then,
Probability of NOT getting AIDS = (0.995) 500 =
0.0816 = 8.16%
=> Probability of getting AIDS = 91.84%
So, having sex with a person with AIDS once then chances of getting it are low. However, if you repeatedly do so the odds become much higher.
Alright now if n=138 then the chances become about 1/2. 138 is very close to the average number of times an adult has sex a year (a little over 2.5 times a week). Now, at first AIDS spread quickly due to the fact people didn’t know it existed. Let’s estimate that AIDS at first had a doubling period to be about 1 year. Now after two decades of spreading then,
# of people with AIDS = 2 20 = about 1 million
So, since AIDS started ~ 1960 then this would be the estimate for the numbers in about ~1980. Now the above was a VAST oversimplification of the spread. It neglects the fact that the diseases also spreads through anal intercourse, sharing of needles, protected vaginal intercourse, etc. It’s purpose it more to show how a disease can spread quickly, even if there is a low probability of transmission.
After I did these calculations I found this: http://pathmicro.med.sc.edu/lecture/Sub-SaharanAfrica6.gif .
I can’t tell exactly when the 1 million mark was reached, but it seems to have occurred between 1983 and 1984. Also, the doubling period seems closer to about 3 years. So, my estimates where off a little. But the exponential growth is quite evident in the beginning of the graph.
What’s also evident is how in the mid 90’s it begins to decelerate. This would be when knowledge of the epidemic grew and measures were taken to slow it down began taken into effect.
So, why did sub-Saharan Africa have the worst experience with AIDS? Well, that’s where it originated and was able to spread in it’s first few years unbeknownst to anyone. Once knowledge of its existence became known then other regions had lower numbers and better tools equipped to fight it.
_ _ _
Moral of story: People suck at probability. For whatever reason our minds have a very poor intuition when dealing with it. That is why Las Vegas isn’t just a desert town and why creationist babble on about the low probability of evolution occurring. Surprise, surprise, racists seem to especially suck at it as well.
Just to elaborate on my previous post, the problems Sub-Saharan Africa faces and has faced–debt, disease, famine, war, poverty, foreign interference, corrupt generals and politicians taking advantage of angst and hatred, etc., etc.–are, in isolation, not at all unique to Africa or Africans.
The thing is, they usually come just one or two at a time. I think Sub-Saharan Africa is unenviably unique in the modern world as being at the confluence of a sort of perfect hell storm of ALL OF THEM. And of course, the more they stack up, the more self-reinforcing they tend to be.
So it’s a huge task to fight them all and roll them back. And racism won’t help.
Hell’s jingle bells, let’s stick a fork in ’em (they’re done) and call it a night.
Or at least I will. I must say, this was a higher class of trolls than we had any right to expect, and while they were delicious, I think we’ve sucked all the juice out of them. Also I’m very tired.
Good night all. Or good day, as the case may be.
In a foreign language and with a mild dyslexia I do mix terms. But let not that distract from the issue. Taboo is the right word for not doing these studies we should have.
As for mentioning cultural factors, you get accused of not providing evidence for the hereditary factors. When you provide evidence for hereditary factors you get accused of overlooking cultural factors.
It just had to be Haiti, a country outside of Sub-Saharan Africa that that develops the worst HIV epidemic. Not any other of the hundred poor communities in Asia, South America or Polynesia. Haiti. It’s not a wink wink, everyone understands the connotation.
And the other countries outside of Sub-Saharan Africa with high infection rates? Guyana, Surinam, Bahamas, Jamaica, Belize.
Your 10-20 years of African independence is complete falsehood. An absolute sign of ignorance. The most important book written on Africa is Meredith’s. I suggest you read it. You have the puzzle pieces, you have some suspicions that won’t voice themselves, Meredith shows you the picture. It’s a monumental work.
Let’s sum this up. The hereditary hypothesis is supported by: twin studies, adoption studies, IQ-tests (e.g. of upper middle-class blacks in USA who score below lowest class chinese and caucasians), and reaction speed tests, the low academic achievement of blacks in European societies with not one exception, the general lack of organisation, planning and forward thinking inside Africa societies that every field worker that keeps his eyes open has witnessed. The thousands year long history of Sub-Saharan Africa that didn’t develop higher civilization (unlike people on every other continent) and suffered from general stagnation. Not one of the thousands of sub cultures and communities.
The Indians of Mauritius as an African exception. The Indians in Kenya as an African exception. The Indians in South Africa as an African exception. The Indians and Chinese in Uganda as an African exception before Idi Amin drove them away.
The complete failure of the 50 years of African Indepence to produce stable, highly organised nations with skilled workers. Not one nation failing compared to the expectations, not two, or ten but everyone.
The success of the historical waves of Indian immigrants in western societies despite their dark skin colour, the presumed environmental explanation for discrimination.
The proven hereditary nature of intellectual potential (50-80% in twin studies done in western countries). The strong correlation between g, IQ, reaction speed and academic achievement and organisational ability.
The studied correlation between testosterone levels, sex drive, promiscuity and aggression. The studied differences in testosterone levels between healthy adult populations.
HIV as pandemic among distinguishable population clusters whether in Africa or outside of Africa.
The strong statistical correlation in homogenous “white” populations between high testosterone, low IQ, anti-social behaviour and criminal tendency, also when adjusted for socio-economic factors.
In common language, the rich white person with low iq and high testosterone is statistically more likely to be violent than the high iq, lower testosterone white of similar socio-economic standing.
The human being is a biological animal, shaped by evolutionary forces. Driven by brain chemistry. There are vast differences between different population clusters in several hereditary traits, and these will affect the social animal and its behaviour and potential.
Yet, we should never forget, that NEVER allow these to shape our morals, never allow them to make us view others as of lesser value as human being. For me personally the realisation has been even more reason to support stronger aid for Africa.
This is all about understanding the problems and requirements for a bottom-up societal change in Africa. Whether it is doctors from Cuba or engineers from India or anti-AIDS campaigns that challenge the taboos. Or paying families to keep their daughters in school. It is a complex mixture of several different factors cultural, socio-economic, nutrional and hereditary. And we need to stop approaching it ideologically and allow free academic discussion of the topics to improve our policies.
Thank you everyone for the discussion. That is it for me.
Cheers
Jack, I’ll second Leigh. You’ve done the heavy lifting here, and done it well.
I’ve really enjoyed reading your comments.
Awer:
Not according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS: Haiti – 2.2%; Bahamas – 3%.
Is the UN’s data wrong?
Too late but, it is interesting how the rubric of academic freedom is brought up. At least allow for the possibility of race, they say, if only for a truly open exploration of ideas. From memory that’s basically how we got here, as far as race theory goes; by ignoring prevalent dogma and openly exploring ideas and looking at the data.
But I suppose awer would dispute that.
Muzz, then make a good definition of what is meant by race that can stand up to scrutiny. So far, there is not a definition that can do that. Once scrutinized they become meaningless. You don’t you take a crack at it instead of complaining about it. Maybe you will understand the futility.
Far from it. And for Haiti, well, see the link above. (I agree with the others, by the way, jack – nice posts.)
Aside from being, as jack lecou has pointed out repeatedly, totally irrelevant to your racist “argument,” this is utter and complete bullshit, as even the most cursory book or article search will tell you. And probably no one on earth knows more about AIDS in Haiti than Paul Farmer, whose landmark Aids and Accusation dealt explicitly with superstitious beliefs in Haiti (it also dealt with the superstitious racist beliefs that guided US policy toward Haiti in the context of the emerging epidemic, so idiots probably wouldn’t like it). (As an aside – I can’t recommend this and Farmer’s subsequent books more highly.)
I know social scientists who have spent years or decades studying the spread of AIDS in Africa (and elsewhere). But of course they’ve done so from within a global, historical contextual understanding (anathema to racists). If there’s an area of study I think may be shied away from, it’s not the role of local cultural features but the role of the Catholic and Protestant (and other) churches in the spread of AIDS, which goes along with the continuing focus on “faith-based” initiatives and organizations. But this is just an impression, and of no great importance here.
By the way, in case anyone’s interested, here are some people in Boston who do great work on AIDS around the world:
http://www.pih.org/home.html
http://www.brighamandwomens.org/socialmedicine/
http://ghsm.hms.harvard.edu/
Feyny @ 638,
Catholic church anyone??
Dont worry about race issues here,its the”condoms are evil” shit from the CC that have sustained and furthered the epidemic !
The South African health minister is a wooist,Bishop Tutu is not much less of a wooist,and the rest of sub-saharan Africa is even worse!
Race,never mind,its praise the lord and dont use condoms !
Nerd, you kinda really missed what I was saying there.
Academic freedom/openness/ whatever is what caused the collapse of race theory (or rather an attendance to facts is what brought its undoing). Now awer is suggesting it’s closed minded and dogmatic not to keep it around as an option, despite it seemingly being irrelevant. But I doubt that’s how he(?) would see it.
Muzz, sorry, my precoffee mistake. Awer just isn’t getting anything that doesn’t fit his preconceived notions, which he can’t justify. I’ve been trailing and mocking the Observer and ignoring Awer. Have at him. I’ll watch your back.
http://www.sagoodnews.co.za/health_and_hiv_aids/barbara_hogan_paves_a_new_path_in_sa.html
Heh, no sweat Nerd. Cheers. It’s probably better I keep quiet and watch the pros for the most part though ;)
Awer, you say that there are other fieldworkers who share your views about genes, race, and behavior, especially those who have spent a lot of time in Africa. Are these views not uncommon in the developmental community (even if in the minority and self-censored)? I’m trained as an anthropologist in African Studies and I have never had an anthropologist or other African studies person tell me such things, no matter how much time they had spent in Africa. (Of course, some of these colleagues are themselves of African ancestry, so perhaps they are biased. That’s sarcasm.)
You’re not entirely off-base about cultural relativism. But that has nothing to do with your genes-testosterone-promiscuity-HIV model and your larger Rushtonian model (Rushton is the major influence, right? Or is it Lynn, or Nyborg…)
By the way, Europeans are fully capable of having highly prevalent and massively destructive beliefs and practices concerning witchcraft. It’s called cultural evolution. Cultures change. Human beings are capable of a wide range of behaviors under different ecological and cultural contexts.
Merely being politically incorrect does not make you a brave truth seeker if you’re wrong. What I think may have happened: you came to Africa as an idealist, saw self-destructive social behaviors (promiscuity, child exploitation, superstition etc.) that flew in the face of political correctness, began to doubt a lot of other liberal dogma, and in your naivete latched onto a simplistic theory that appeared to explain these unpleasant facts. Am I close?
Jack, nicely argued. Patience is indeed a virtue.
——-
… and as I shout at the retreating “Scandinavian”…
Awer said:
Regarding Haiti… “It’s not a wink wink, everyone understands the connotation.”
Why don’t you spell it out for us then.
“When you provide evidence for hereditary factors you get accused of overlooking cultural factors.”
“The hereditary hypothesis is supported by…”
When have you provided evidence? One link to a Wikipedia article about the Minnesota transracial adoption study. I’m not even an expert and I found half a dozen problems with the conclusion you’re leaping to, already noted, yet still ignored.
Provide some scientific sources, not just journalistic ones. You are making an extraordinary claim on a science blog, so you have to start citing the peer-reviewed literature before digging yourself deeper.
Where are *you* getting this information? What researchers and journals make this genetic claim? Which scientists are cited by the historian/journalist you keep naming? Is Meredith even making a biological claim?
And don’t try claiming that there’s a conspiracy against the truth, because then you’ll have to prove that as well.
Where are your citations? You don’t even name that professor who hitch-hiked across Africa. How do I know you aren’t either making him up or citing a man full of mere anecdotes?
Finally, in #641 you identify a slew of problems which you allege are based in biology, and then recommend fixing them with changes in culture and society. But if the problems are genetic, and the social approaches of the past have failed because of the genetic problems, what makes you think that such approaches would work now? Why aren’t you advocating genetic engineering instead?
“Cultural relativism is a highly dominant paradigm on this side of the pond, and also in USA I have understood.”
Actually, your evidence-free claims would have succeeded more in a society where all claims are considered equal regardless of the facts. But as you have seen, we don’t think that way. We — and I want to especially recognize Jack, here — are not letting you get away with your attempts to mask opinion as fact.
How is this for relativism?: Awer, your ideas are inferior. Your adopted ideology of race pseudoscience is inferior to our scientific worldview (which also happens to nicely dovetail with the multiculture). That is why we keep defeating you. You might argue that it’s because you have inferior genetics, but I would doubt that.
#593
I think Indian Removal was a great policy. It allowed my ancestors to settle on land which had previously been occupied by the Creek Indians. I still own some of that land today. As a child, one of my favorite hobbies was collecting Indian artifacts like arrowheads, scrapers, and pottery.
Man, it’s getting a little tiresome having to clean up after you Stormfront bigots. Go away, Observer. You’re about to be banned, if you keep this up.
#595
1.) You have no serious objection to racial consciousness, racial distinctions, race advocacy, racial pride – negroes engage in all of the above, in public with great fanfare, and you applaud them for it. The same is true of Jews, Hispanics, Asians, homosexuals and other minorities. As I said above, it is only when the white majority engages in these things that you complain. Simply put, you are anti-white.
2.) Liberals insist that race is nothing but a “social construct,” but immediately relapse into making racial distinctions in everyday life that corresponds to those of traditional physical anthropology.
3.) Your cherished belief that racism is evil amounts to nothing more than an opinion.
4.) Your points are trivial. The ability of liberals to make racial distinctions undermines their claim that racial categories are too ambiguous and thus purely social conventions.
PC,
I’m not from Stormfront. I come here to read Gene Expression.
I wouldn’t have much against it, though in such cases the differences are usually so great that people say “subspecies”.
Of course, in German there aren’t separate words for “race” and “breed”.
Very, very few. Even species usually get described based on “can I tell them apart”; the codes of nomenclature don’t define “species”.
Literature? Can you possibly be serious?
Oh, by “literature” you mean it’s actually written down, right? In that case, duh. The higher castes have been literate in India for 2500 years. In subsaharan Africa… not so much.
Does g even exist? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I get the impression that the guy who invented the IQ just assumed intelligence had to be composed of the factors that seemed logical to him and never tested this assumption. (The closer you get to humans, the worse the science gets, says the proverb.)
Oh, of course it’s not a coincidence. But is it genetic, or is the emphasis on learning cultural?
Because nobody invested in education. What good can come out of a place with hundreds of millions of illiterates?
awer shure is thoughtful, but he’s data-poor, and not thoughtful enough to recognize unspoken assumptions when he sees them or to notice alternative explanations that are more parsimonious than those offered by his sources.
Respect has to be earned…
As I told you before, Matt: if you can’t read* my surname, copy & paste it like everyone else does. :-)
* I’ll blame that on various education systems and the accumulated insanity of the English orthography, rather than on stupidity on your part. awer will blame it on inherited stupidity on your part, though.
Wow! Ladies and Gentlemen, the stupidest argument an American can make.
What does that even mean, “evidence of a moral principle”??? Methinks you’re confusing “is” and “ought”.
Brownian didn’t respond, so let me try. My values come from my own self-interest, via two ways:
— Innate empathy. “If I do good, I feel good. If I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.” (Abraham Lincoln)
— Rational thinking about my long-term self-interest. For example, I’d like to be treated as if my life were a worth in itself. How do I most easily get people to do that? By convincing them that everyone’s life, theirs included, is a worth in itself. And so on.
I get the impression you’ve never thought about this kind of issue. In reality it’s so easy…
One thousand? That would mean that there are countries where 250 % of the population, or four in one people, are infected…
In some places, people believe that sex with a virgin magically cures AIDS… imagine the consequences.
Then why aren’t more of them bald?
Is there any connection between these two paragraphs?
The Observer is back trying to score some points. The vapidity of his arguments negates that. Summation to date: I have nothing, I know nothing, and I wish to show that nothing to you’ll.
Hey, look, a self-confessed asshole!
This is not gnxp. I encourage you to go read that site, then, and take your racist, ignorant ass out of here.
#658
1.) Re: Founders. In other words, I made an unimpeachable point.
2.)I see no evidence of universal objective moral principles comparable to natural laws.
3.) Abraham Lincoln was a racist who spent years plotting to deport negroes to Africa and Latin American.
4.) White Americans enjoyed full political, civil, and social rights for centuries without extending them to negroes. The existence of rights, which are mere social conventions, does not imply their universality.
The pointless Observer is still trying. Still nothing. Yawn, he is such a bore.
“The existence of rights, which are mere social conventions, does not imply their universality.”
Yes, but seeking not to extend them does make one an arsehole (and give or take allowances for the background attitudes of their times this extends to your founders and respected ex-presidents as well)
I think MLK day is the perfect opportunity to clean house. Goodbye, Observer.
I recommend any other racist vermin might want to lie low today, because my tolerance for you is at a very low point.
And now to our two nazis.
I don’t think you’re going to be banned. What for? All you’ve done is show us your ignorance (as I’ll explain below) and throw a few pathetic insults around; none of this is forbidden.
No reason for banning is morally neutral. Annoying people — trolling, slagging, insipidity, egnorance (correct spelling; google for it), spamming — is evil…
Vileness as a bannable offense isn’t new, in case you really care about legalistic details. Check out what philos was banned for.
Never mind ignorant hatred, eh?
You’ve just contradicted yourself.
The problem with being a member of Stormfront is not that Stormfront represents the alleged interests of a self-defined group; as you have correctly noticed, several harmless organizations do that, too. The problem is that being a member of Stormfront means to be a neonazi — it means to cheer at industrial-scale mass murder. In other words, you’re an incredible asshole and proud of it.
LOL. Your so-called sources got shredded because they weren’t scientific.
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
Priceless! Comes into a ScienceBlog and believes he’s talking to people who comment on YouTube. ROTFLMAO!
Just one thing: a friend of mine had such a course that taught the differences between male and female skeletons (race not being an issue in Austria due to lack of diversity there). Well, the textbook illustrations show the skeletons of Superman and Wonder Woman. Practically nobody really looks like that. Most people are somewhere in the middle, often so literally that even experienced experts have trouble telling a skeleton’s sex.
Says one who is too stupid to know that religions aren’t genetically determined. Right on, Mr Buford.
Not at all. Have a look at one of our libertarian-bashing threads. Besides, political correctness — the idea that only members of a group can make true statements about that group — is a right-wing concept.
Creationist logic from A to Z: the Divine Truth is so obvious that everyone really believes in it, only some people pretend not to followed by I actually know anything about the topics I’m talking about or rather everyone is just as ignorant as I. So predictable. So boring. So stupid…
Why do people laugh at
creationistsracists?Only
creationistsracists don’t understand why!Oyyyy. How utterly
generousmegalomaniac of you.…give or take a few zeroes…
And what did we get? Three little racistlets, one of them even left-wing. So cute. Even the Observer barely qualifies as an Internet Tough Guy!
“Sincerely”? How odd. Usually, the threats PZ gets end with “Kind regards”. Is that a difference between racists and creationists?
—————
The Internet: where even the nazis are laughable losers.
Looks like the dungeon’s white supremacist prison gang is gonna get a boost in membership.
Is there an equivalent to the TalkOrigins Index of Creationist Claims for pseudoscientific racist fuckwittery?
PZ, if you delete Obeserver’s comments, please delete my mocks of him. They won’t make any sense out of context.
NoR
The asshole farted;
The existence of rights, which are mere social conventions, does not imply their universality
Which is why there are people who insist that rights are not given, they are taken. And if those people have to knock the asshole off of his low perch, so much the better.
By the way, I am not anti white. I am anti white supremest.
Lest anyone think that, because Observer is banned, he isn’t wrong, too:
You made no point whatsoever, moron. The Founders aren’t gods. They weren’t infallible. We don’t have to imitate them; in fact, occasionally we even shouldn’t.
Of course not. You’ve utterly missed the point, and my explanation near the bottom of the long comment that is currently number 658.
Yes. Too bad for him. Goes to show he wasn’t divine either.
Trying to derive an ought from an is is the pinnacle of stupidity.
Take, for example, Benjamin Franklin. Electrocuting turkeys in order to impress French women? Absolutely scandalous!!
Ha! One of the mighty whitey rangers made a comment about MLK’s adulteries in the MLK thread. Can that jackass come here and tell how Franklin was an horny old goat?
About as unimpeachable as Rod Blagojevich.
You haven’t even remotely started to establish that there are studies we should be doing that aren’t being done, let alone that there’s taboo involved. (0 points)
Oops. Blockquote fail. Sigh.
I missed this, but it is expected “The thousands year long history of Sub-Saharan Africa that didn’t develop higher civilization (unlike people on every other continent) and suffered from general stagnation. Not one of the thousands of sub cultures and communities.”
Five minutes on google can easily dispel that myth, but if you have access to journals, there has been quite a bit that has come out in the last few decades, as more people focus on that area, and more countries are safe for archaeologists & anthropologists (and more native archaeologists are trained as the education infrastructure is improved above subsistence). None of that has to do with genetics, btw. If you add in all the natural factors (tropical conditions are not conducive for preservation of many materials, weathering, etc). Hell, just look at the evidence for massive cities in the Amazon region, or the cities and civilizations of North American Indians, to help dispel that “if it ain’t white northern European it ain’t civilization” belief.
If one wants to understand further why some continents produced larger and more technologically advanced civilizations, I heartily recommend a read of Guns, Germs, and Steel. To grossly simplify Jared Diamond’s argument, It turns out it’s kinda difficult to get civilization without things like wheat and domesticable animals, something that relatively few places on Earth actually had. Part of today’s difference in the geographic distribution of civilizations is due to differences in the available resources of a given region.
Consider two of awer’s failures:
– The testosterone levels of culturally traditional Africans. (Let me guess, awer, you don’t know a whole heck of a lot about developmental plasticity and the endocrine system, steroid metabolism, nor AR receptors, do you?)
– His false claim about indigenous African civilization. (What kind of African specialist makes such a gross error?)
Those two alone are pretty devastating to his entire racialist thesis.
Yet he sanctimoniously lectures us on following the evidence wherever it leads.
The evidence strongly suggests that awer is a dilettante with a head full of pop scientific racism. He was shocked by some of the social problems he witnessed in Africa and feeling betrayed by liberal pieties and lacking in intellectual sophistication (hence easily suckered by half-baked arguments), he lurched towards racialist genetic determinism.
Pakistani men have lower testosterone than either European or African-Caribbean men, who have about the same level of testosterone.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118881252/abstract
Recall what awer wrote about AIDS and HIV, including Haiti.
Yes, under 40-year-old African-American men have higher mean testosterone than under 40 European-American men. Do these groups have the same diets or social and physical environments?
Ive read G.G. and S with much interest and I think it likely is part of the answser. The odd thing, though, is the logical jump that Tulse and Colugo, as evidenced in post #680, are unwilling to make.
Yes, the lay of the land and the distribution of natural resources are quite different around the world. Peninsulas in Europe, vast plateaus in China. The geology of Africa is somewhat unique too, rivers flow from the center out, instead of many continents where they traverse. Different animals, and choices to catch vs domesticate them. Yes, different populations of people have had quite different diets, and social and physical environments for pretty long time, perhaps as long as 50,000 years, with some things changing in recent centuries. So, we agree on that I think. So wouldnt these environmental differences, via natural selection, begin to have an effect on the organisms that live in them? Arent those observed parameters preconditions for speciation? Certainly humans havent separated for that length of time, but might this long period of relative isolation, in different environments, have some non-trivial effect on the genome? I realize there is debate between punctuated equilibrium vs gradualism and since we clearly did not speciate, perhaps we didnt change much at all over those millienia. But it aint wrong to ask.
The problem is not the asking, it’s the refusing to listen to the answers.
The answers which have been provided to you upthread. Or, if you prefer, are probably available in more rigorous and less snarky form in any population genetics text.
(Not accepting–or not understanding–the answers science provides is a key mark of creationists and pseudo-scientists of all kinds, incidentally.)
awer:
Apparently it may head to the CDC:
Everybody here is long gone for sure. Perhaps some folks will see this post. Im wondering, Jack, is continuing to be interested in scientific papers like this a ‘key mark’ of which deficiency of mine?
http://genomebiology.com/2009/10/1/R7