Reddit reviews The 10000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution

Probably the most well-known example of recent and ongoing human evolution is lactase persistence (aka lactose tolerance). Ordinarily humans lose the ability to digest lactose fairly soon after being weaned. However, among populations of pastoralists more than once a beneficial mutation has appeared and spread that conferred the ability to digest lactose throughout adulthood. But there are still large human populations (most notably East Asians) for whom lactose intolerance is still the norm.

For more on this, and other topics related to your question, I highly recommend The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending.

The Ashkenazim supposedly have an average IQ a standard deviation above the norm. Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending claim that this is because among the Ashkenazim only those who excelled in banking and trade thrived the last 1000 years of pogroms, having 5 times as many children as Ashkenazim working in unrelated fields. As you can imagine their claims are controversial though.

"...in the last 50-100k years"

Make that the last couple of thousand years. Specifically the Ashkenazi Jews seem to have evolved higher than average intelligence because of cultural and sociological factors.
http://www.amazon.com/000-Year-Explosion-Civilization-Accelerated/dp/0465002218

The hypothesis of this book is that human beings have evolved more in the past 10,000 years than in any other period of the development of man. It's interesting that you picked that exact time frame.

Some scientists certaintly think so. See The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution

A fascinating explanation of why this happened can be found in the book The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution

Such a curious goal you have. :p

Mises and Hayek (the use of knowledge in society) are quite sensible. I read pinker a long time ago but he sort of ignores the whole human biological diversity thing... unlike these guys. And yeah, I'm familiar with the IQ studies. I have a good friend who's been published in Intelligence.

So I recognize that there are ethnic differences between various human populations. And how there may be something to worry about for whites in our new welfare state dominated multicultural societies. But this neonazi stuff, I dunno. Have you read the diamond age by neal stephenson or the anglosphere challenge. I find their vision somewhat compelling. Another interesting book if a bit outdated is Tragedy & Hope. :D

So, in conclusion, not really offended by anything. :p pl0x, try again.

>Firstly, a higher IQ is closely correlated to factors beyond genetics.

Wrong. The American Psychological Association puts the heritability of intelligence at around 0.75 for adults. Based on the available research, I'd say intelligence is somewhere between 70-80% heritable.

>Diet and education are by far the most important.

Not even close:

>The role of nutrition in intelligence remains obscure. Severe childhood malnutrition has clear negative effects, but the hypothesis that particular “micronutrients” may affect intelligence in otherwise adequately-fed populations has not yet been convincingly demonstrated.

Look, I don't doubt that nutrition has some role to play in the development of intelligence, but to claim that nutrition is more important than genetics is absurd.

>Both suffer in poor communities.

As Murray and Hernstein wrote: "The average black and white differ in IQ at every level of socioeconomic status (SES) , but they differ more at high levels of SES than at low levels." Impoverished whites do better on tests like the SATs than upper-middle/upper class blacks.

>But beyond that, in the amount of time the various human races were separated from each other, evolution simply couldn't have made people THAT different.

Obviously, you haven't read the book The 10,000 Year Explosion. It argues that human evolution rapidly increased thanks to civilization.

I think that the cognitive differences between the races are quite minimal when compared to the physical differences. Still, it seems quite evident that the cold northern environments of Asia and Europe would select for intelligence and cooperation. The idea that evolution worked its magic on skin color, facial structure, bone density, penis size, etc. but stopped at the brain is a farce.

>We know there is no mechanism in Asians' bodies that makes them smarter than anyone else.

Yes, but nobody has ever claimed there is a mechanism in Asians' bodies that makes them smarter than anyone else. What people claim is that the races have a different distribution of gene frequencies, and some genes that are correlated with intelligence are more common among some population groups.

>But, I like how you think 100,000 Japanese Americans to represent the entire Asian community in the United states

I was specifically talking about Japanese-Americans.

>then compare them to the plight of 39 million African Americans living today.

My point was that there are Americans who have had it much worse than blacks and yet they've been able to thrive. Of course, I attribute this mostly to their higher average IQs.

>And yes, there are poor Asian communities riddled with crime. Look at the LA neighborhoods rife with Asian street gangs.

There will always be a large number of low IQ members of any race or ethnic group. Still, I'd bet the poorest 90% Asian neighborhood will be safer than the average 90% black neighborhood.

This comes off as political tut-tutting. Here is my take.

(1) The popular take-away from GC&S is precisely what Romney put forth, namely, that: "the physical characteristics of the land account for the differences in the success of the people that live there." Pointing out that the availability of iron ore does not constitute a significant difference just seems petty.

(2) Romney's culture-heavy explanation from the recent editorial is obviously pandering, but Jared Diamond is also guilty of pandering, in that he's unwilling to consider that there might be biological differences between groups. Romney and Diamond are environmental determinists: cut from the same cloth. So Diamond is close to hypocritical in calling Romney out.