Nature-Nurture

Does Our Paleolithic Past Shape Our Modern Survival Instinct?

gregladen — Tue, 15 Mar 2016 08:00:51 +0000

Does Our Paleolithic Past Shape Our Modern Survival Instinct?

The latest National Geographic Roundtable Question: Survivor-style television has grown increasingly popular over the years and done a great job of illustrating our brain's fascinating built-in survival instinct. What role do you think our ancestral instincts play today in helping us survive, thrive and accomplish our goals? How much of our ancestral survival instincts are innate verses learned?

First, the innate vs. learned part of the question. This is a false dichotomy. We have evolved to learn. We probably have "built in" mechanisms to learn new things. This means that when we have learned something new, that new skill or information is a product of something innate and something from our environment. (See: Culture Influences Brain Function and IQ Varies With Context.)

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National Geographic Channel's Brain Games: The Survivor Brain premieres Sunday, March 20, at 9/8c on National Geographic Channel

In this episode, host Jason Silva meets several people in Colorado Springs, Colorado, who personify the word “survivor,” and puts their brains to the test in a battery of challenges engineered to demonstrate what it takes to be a super survivor. The group gathers to deconstruct the brain science behind human survival: how we evolve to survive and what role our ancient instincts play today in keeping us alive … or getting in the way. Neuroscientist Dr. Bart Russell from Lockheed Martin tests one group’s cognitive performance under stress. Dr. John Huth of Harvard University, who wrote a book on how to find our way when we are lost, tests the brain’s ability to remember details. Dr. Alex Jordan of the University of Texas puts the survivors to the ultimate test, but they’ll have to accept that the key to surviving may be a collective effort. We learn common characteristics of survivors — whether hardy or fragile — and discover what can be done to tap into the brain’s built-in survival instinct.

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The degree to which this is important should not be underestimated. Humans pay a high evolutionary cost for this ability to learn. We have developed over evolutionary time a mostly novel stage of development that we call "childhood" during which we are vulnerable and demand a great deal of parental investment, far beyond our nearest primate relatives. Childbirth in humans is dangerous to both mother and child compared to other mammals, and this is in large part because of our large (but mostly "empty" brains at birth. Childhood involves the internal organization of that brain due to experiential learning aided by built in learning mechanisms. This takes years, and results in a young adult adapted not to our paleolithic past, but to our current cultural environment. (See: The Oystercatcher and the Clam)

In other words, we are adapted, by evolution, to be adaptable to the particular context in which we live. For this reason, our actual (in the sense of current, now) set of survival skills are adapted to the present because we are shaped by evolution to be able to do that.

Having said that it is still true, as demonstrated in the National Geographic special, that we are products of our past. We are endowed, for better or worse, with automatic reactions to the environment such as the stress reactions and the famous "four F's" of fighting, fleeing, feeding, and sex. Our learned abilities incorporate these basic limbic (brain and endocrine) functions, but these functions are powerful and often produce less than ideal results.

There is a debate in evolutonary psychology and related fields over the degree to which specific abilities, including survival abilities, are shaped mainly by our paleolithic past vs. our cultural and more immediate developmental past. An example that is sometimes used is the bartender vs. file clerk test. Here's how that goes, simplified.

Several subjects are given this problem. You are a file clerk and you go on vacation for a time, and a temp takes over your job while you are gone. On your return you have the sense that the temp messed up some of your files. You are faced with a set of labeled folders that may or may not have been filed incorrectly. Your job is to open the absolute minimum number of folders to test the hypothesis that they are correctly filed. there is in fact only one correct answer to this question. A majority of subjects fail to arrive at the correct answer.

Alternatively, several subjects are given this other problem. You are a bartender and a specified number of people (the same number as filed in the previous setting) are sitting at a table in your bar asking for various drinks. Some of the drinks contain alcohol, some don't. You suspect one or more of the individuals sitting at the table are lying about their age, so you need to ask for ID. Your job is to ask the absolute minimum number of people for their ID. There is exactly one answer to this problem, and the underlying logic (and answer) is identical to the file clerk problem. A majority of subjects arrive at the correct answer.

Those who put a lot of stock in our brains being shaped by our paleolithic past believe that this is because we evolved in a context where identifying liars is important, so we are innately good at that, while file clerking is a modern endeavor, so we are not evolved to be good at that. The alternative explanation is that we each grew up, as cultural beings, in an environment where learning to detect liars is important, so we got good at that, but very few of us grew up as file clerks, so most of us are bad at that.

I personally lean towards the latter, and I look at the costly trait of childhood as the mechanism by which this situation emerges.

gregladen Tue, 03/15/2016 - 04:00

Tags

behavioral biology

Nature-Nurture

childhood

learning

National Geographic Roundtable

Survival Instinct

behavioral biology

Um, how good are we really at detecting lies?

Um, voting records will tell you...

Tales of the Ex-Apes

gregladen — Wed, 02 Sep 2015 18:00:54 +0000

Tales of the Ex-Apes

Jonathan Marks' new book is called "Tales of the Ex-Apes: How We Think about Human Evolution"

I've got to tell you that when I first saw the title of this book, the letters played in my head a bit. Tails of the Ex-Apes. That would be funny because apes don't have tails. Or Tales of the Exapes. Pronounced as you wish. Perhaps in an Aztec accent.

Anyway...

Jon Marks is a colleague and a friend from way back. He is a biological anthropologist who has engaged in critical study of central biological themes, such as genetics, and he's said a few things about race. He wears black, often does not shave, and has probably been a member of the Communist Party, or at least, taught a class or two on Marxist Theory. So, a book by Marks on "how we think about human evolution" (the subtitle) is not going to be about human evolution, but how we frame questions about human evolution, and how the process of unraveling answers to these questions revel our own biases. Dialectical stuff. Like that.

In the book Jon says interesting things about basic anthropological theory, thought, and key touchstone figures and topics like Darwin and kinship. On the more biological side of things, species, adaptations, gene trees, and phylogeny. The destructive core of the book is an anti-reductionist critique of evolutionary theory and the constructive core of the book is an bio-cultural argument as it applies to doing anthropology, as well as how it applies to the human (or just prehuman?) transformation to a self considering sort of sentient being that bothers to write books about the process of asking questions about itself. Humans are a product of lived experience, but not just that. Humanness is the product of the sum of human's cultural history. And, actually, science, which is an important human thing, does not escape that framework, something I probably agree with (^^see the subtitle of my blog^^). Marks writes,

... we see the human species culturally. Science is a process of understanding, and we understand things culturally. We hope that we can observe and transcend the cultural biases of our predecessors, but there is no non-cultural knowledge. As a graphic example, consider the plaque that was attached to Pioneer 10 ... Why was NASA sending pornography into outer space? ... Because they wanted to depict the man and woman in a cultureless, natural state. But surely the shaves, haircuts, and bikini waxes are cultural! As are the gendered postures, with only the man looking you straight in the eye. In a baboon, that would be a threat display; let's hope the aliens ... aren't like baboons.

And so on. Like that. Great book.

If you are teaching a course in human evolution, you might seriously consider using this as a second reading because of the critical treatment of material surely left unexamined by your textbook. Also, it would give the students a fairer sense of what they are in for if they chose Anthropology as a major, for better or worse. This is not introductory material, but the prose would work for any college student. Also, the text is well footnoted.

The book will be out any day now, scheduled for September. Available in various formats, very much worth the read.

gregladen Wed, 09/02/2015 - 14:00

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Driving The Patriarchy: Demonic Males, Feminism, and Genetic Determinism

gregladen — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:13:38 +0000

Driving The Patriarchy: Demonic Males, Feminism, and Genetic Determinism

Behaviors are not caused by genes. There is not a gene that causes you to be good, or to be bad, or to be smart, or good at accounting, or to like bananas. There are, however, drives. "Drives" is a nicely vague term that we can all understand the meaning of. Thirst and hunger are drives we can all relate to. In fact, these drives are so basic, consistent and powerful that almost everyone has them, we share almost exact experiences in relation to them, and they can drive (as drives are wont to do) us to do extreme things when they are not met for long periods of time. While eating disorders are common enough and these affect a hunger drive, it is very rare to find a person thirst themselves to death.

Beyond thirst and hunger there are other drives, and as we explore them we find increasing complexity, inter-individual and inter-cultural variation, and even differences in whether or not they are present in an individual or widely manifest (or not) in a culture. Nonetheless, the fact that they are "true drives" is evidenced by their near ubiquity across cultures, their link to a biological mechanism typically having to do with the limbic and endocrine systems, and the fact that when we don't see them acting overtly in a person it is often because a fair amount of individual or cultural energy has been spent repressing them.

Personally, I think that most biological drives, maybe all, produce extreme or pathological behavior if unchecked, and that therefore all drives are repressed to some degree in almost all individual humans. There is considerable evidence that things like anger, thirst, or fear (to use highly generalizable terms) are manifest as a balance between limbic circuits that are excitatory or inhibitory; Experimental interference with one or the other circuit produces extreme results such as a rat that will not stop eating or a cat that will maintain an arch-backed bristle-haired stance until it falls over in exhaustion.

Also, I think that what I'm calling drives (again, as a convenience ... you won't find what I am thinking on Wikipedia) are a basic mammalian trait. Therefore, it is reasonable to ask if some of the evolutionary events related to the rise of new species of mammals are related to changes in drives, or more interestingly (and more commonly, I suspect) changes in how drives are on one hand repressed and on the other hand re-configured to work with each other.

Thus, one could say that since humans are behaviorally derived with respect to many traits in comparison to African apes in general, a major feature of the human brain must be mechanisms telling the rest of the brain, to some extent every minute of the day, "Don't be a chimp .... Don't be a chimp. Seriously, dood ... don't be a chimp."

At the individual level, and I'm oversimplifying a great deal here, one might imagine drives being enhanced or repressed to a degree that makes an individual very different from others. The fictional character "Brennan" on the TV series Bones comes to mind. She seems most of the time to have no drives at all, or to be intellectually in denial of them. Social and psychological pathologies may often be associated with drives that are inappropriately strong or weak.

So, is it really true that behaviors are not "caused by genes" if there are these drives? Yes, and I say this because the average person who is thinking that behaviors are caused by genes is not thinking at all about intermediate mechanisms, and if they are, they are assuming that the intermediate mechanisms are little more than a transparent ether through which genes operate on the behavioral phenotypes we observe. Also, "genetic determinism" is not about whether or not one or more genes are involved in a trait, but rather (and this is very important so if you've got a yellow highlighter uncap it now) "genetic determinism" is about the close correspondence between variation across individuals in the genetic code they carry and the ensuing variation across individuals in the phenotype they express. Moreover, "genetic determinism" as usually conceived is presumed to average out within categories such as "race" or "sex" with very little variation within, but enough variation between these categories to be measurable. Which is why the concept is almost always racist or sexist or both.

But in reality, variation in the way limbic and other brain functions as well as closely related endocrine systems are manifest in humans and probably many other mammals is only to a small extent a function of genes, and is otherwise a function of what we may loosely call development. This relationship is not a post-hoc observation, or a liberal excuse, or a politically motivated bit of rhetoric. It is, rather, the explanation for why we have large brains that mostly develop, in detail, on the basis of experience rather than genetic coding for how they are hooked up. (And, while this applies mainly to mammals, something like it might be going on in some birds.)

Consider long term habituation. When endocrinologists (those who study hormones) measure hormone levels, they generally adjust the numbers to account for individual baselines, because while two individuals may have very different baselines they can have the same range of behaviors and responses. Two men may have androgen hormone levels that vary between them by a factor of 2X or 3X, but have the same basic behavioral repertoire. This is because of two things: First, the number of receptor sites and their sensitivity matters as much as, if not more than, the serum hormone levels; and second, most hormone systems are some sort of feedback loop that relies on changes in concentration against set points that are individually established, not species-specific. Putting it another way, if a hormone system is like a thermostat in your house (a homeostatic equilibrium system) then each individual has a personally established and potentially unique "room temperature." This variation between individuals could be genetic, but is it just as likely, or even more likely, to be developmental. A related example is the mechanism by which we become "cold" or "warm" (with respect to comfort). This is not innate, but rather, a function of exposure to environmental conditions in early life (thigh there are body-shape related variations that probably are genetic that matter to thermoregulation in a non-industrial population).

Given huge piles of evidence for individual variation in behavior as a function of context, conditioning, and development and relatively little evidence that has not been made up, cooked up, or otherwise tainted or damaged for straight forward genetic determination of behavior, I'm going to go with the model that humans vary mostly on the basis of their biological and cultural experiences post-conception. For example, the single largest factor in variation in human intelligence in a given population can easily be prenatal alcohol exposure, or variation in folic acid in the maternal diet. Given the amount of post-conception stuff the brain does in development, and how much of that depends on experience, it is very unlikely that brain function varies across individuals on the basis of genes (other than individuals with genetic disorders, but we need not count broken individuals in considering normative development).

From what we know about "drives" and from what we know about brains and development, it is very reasonable to hypothesize that variation across individual human males in something like violence levels, likelihood to carry out rape, or other widespread and usually male-associated behavior is environmental. Yet, these behaviors at the base, the systemic potential for these behaviors, is a mammalian feature or a primate feature or a great-ape feature, depending on level of analysis.

This is not the place to discuss this in detail, but a quick digression regarding comparison among mammals is probably useful at this point in order to stem unnecessary direct comparisons that may come up in discussion. Maybe mammalian males in general have certain traits leading them towards violent or icky behavior, but the details are important. The fact that big horn sheep butt heads in contests sometimes to the death, taken as an extreme male-male competitive trait, can not be linked to similar behavior among human males (and such behavior does seem to happen in humans). The basal bovid-type organisms from which the big horn sheep derive was probably a small bodied monogamous forest dwelling animal in which males probably did not have a much greater tendency to butt heads than females, though both males and females would likely have employed some sort of "violence" in defending young or territories. Among primates, Old World Monkeys include a lot more examples of violent male behavior than do New World Monkeys. The latter group, in fact, have many cases of distinctly non-violent males as typical of the species. We don't know the nature of the basal primate, but we cannot assume that it was like a baboon, which is the primate often taken as prototypical in thinking about primate social behavior. In fact, we can guess that it was probably NOT like a baboon for a number of reasons. Therefore, what might be thought of as "over the top" male behavior (butting heads to the death) is NOT a basal mammalian trait that may be found in humans because we are mammals. The phylogenetic link between big horn sheep and human football players is non-existent. (This is why many of us cringe with the latest "evolutionary psychology" finding!) Rather, violence in human males is either derived in our species or in a set of species closely related, including perhaps the great apes, or apes in general, or some other subset of Old World primates.

And, this would be a matter of evolution of drives in a very general sense which are then shaped in a maturing individual by other developmental tendencies and in social beings with large brains, buy culture.

Which brings us to the famous YanSan comparison.

There is an intellectual and pedagogic tradition that comes from people working out of a handful of American Universities (originally, Berkeley, Chicago and Harvard, but then other places such as Madison) having to do with the study of both primates and human foragers. The details are interesting but this is not the place for them. What is important is this: A lot of us (and I'm part of that tradition) learned some of our best metaphors, for doing both research and teaching, from Irv DeVore, who either came up with them himself or consolidated them from people with whom he overlapped or worked, such as Sherwood Washburn, George Gaylord Simpson, and others. And one of those tidbits, which is a comparison and a set of stories much larger than your average metaphor, is the YanSan comparison.

It runs like this. Imagine a Yanomamo village in the Amazon. The Yan (short for Yanomamo) live in a society that for various reasons incorporates a fair amount of violence among men. Men who have killed other men are given a special name of respect, tend to have more children than other men, and often have two wives (in a society in which while polygyny is allowed, it is rare). Then, in contrast, imagine a "San" (Busheman) community in southern Africa. The San live in a society of hunter-gatherers where variation in status among men, for any reason at all, is discouraged, and interpersonal violence is frowned upon. Among the Yan, disputes are settled with chest pounding duels or axe fights, while among the San, disputes are settled by endless discussion during which there might even be hugging.

That's the background. The YanSan comparison itself goes like this:
In the day to day course of events, a Yan child may become upset or agitated as children occasionally do, perhaps in relation to another child. The good Yan father steps in. He brings his son to the center of the community courtyard and calls over the other child with whom the conflict has arisen, and that child's' father tags along. The two Yan dads equip the children with poles about the length of their bodies and set them up to whack at each other until one of them succumbs to injury. Or perhaps, instead of using the poles (because that can be dangerous ... you can poke your eye out with one of those things) the dads teach the 6 year olds the rudimentary form of the chest pounding duel, in which each participant gets one free shot at the other's chest, and you can use one fist or two to pound on your opponent. The participants go back and forth taking fee shots at each other's chest until one falls to the ground. The one still standing wins.

Meanwhile, over in the San society which is entirely different, a perturbed child is treated differently. If a toddler or youngster is very upset, yelling, having a tantrum, any nearby adult who knows the child, often but not always a relative, will hold the child in both arms until he calms down (this can take considerable time), and then spend some time soothing the boy and telling him thoughtful thoughts.

In both cases, there is a set of drives typical for men, and there is a society in which there is expected, normative male behavior. But since the expected behavior is very different between the two societies the developmental process has a lot of work to do. Boys will not on their own grow up to be Yanomamo warriors with the proper kind of fierceness, and boys will not on their own grow up to be San hunters with a proper cooperative attitude, unless a great deal of cultural energy is expended.

And this is facilitated by the existence of childhood, which may well be Homo sapiens most important adaptation. The YanSan comparison exemplifies how humans transit from blastosphere to adult with respect to behavior, and demonstrates that there is a great deal of potential variation in what the result is, and thus, there is great potential variation in the sorts of societies that Homo sapiens can come up with.

But males are still demonic.

What I mean by that is this: Across all human societies, even when there is relative equality between males and females in power or other measures, males are the more violent sex on average. When human societies range into more violent normative behavior, it is males who are in the vanguard virtually all the time. There are plenty of cases where females are also violent, but they are comparatively rare and less extreme.

And, there are patterns to this behavior seen across society, and interestingly, there are even patterns of male behavior when males are viewed across species, as per the above discussion, among the great apes and in particular comparing chimps and humans. Those patterns may be accidental, they may be nothing more than basic mammalian behavior (or the behavior of an internally fertilizing lactating creature, on whatever planet it is found) and thus almost too basic to be meaningful, or they could be patterns around the specific nature of ape social systems, of which chimpanzees and humans have their own similar yet different versions.

Some years ago, Richard Wrangham, emerging as a leading primatologist, was woo'ed away from his home in Michigan by Harvard to do research and teach interesting courses. One of the courses he developed in his new milieu and taught to advanced undergrads in bioanthropology was about male behavior in apes, looking at the behavioral biology and culture of this behavior, seeking patterns, similarities, contrasts, etc. Over a short period of time this course became very popular. Knee-jerk feminists responded to the course with great disdain because it seemed to be biological determinism, but then some went ahead and took it anyway and found out that it was not. And eventually the course became a book: Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence

Many have criticized Wrangham's book for suggesting that simple underlying genetic systems determine things like gang violence in humans, but few who have read the book have come away thinking that. It may well be that Wrangham's view is somewhat deterministic, but that is hardly the point of the study. And, if you bring to the discussion, as Wrangham does, the concept of "drives" or similar psychological phenomena as I've described above, the genetic determinism that might be inherent in many comparisons between species' behavior rather fades away. More interesting, though, may be the political nature of the problem of determinism, and this relates to the ongoing discussion of male privilege as well as to a previous discussion we've had on this blog about rape. Is it possible to attain the ideal feminist society (towards which we all strive) if male and female drives are somewhat different, and male drives are (or at least some of them are) so ... dickish?

... a new philosophy has emerged in the last decades, an evolutionary brand of feminism that sees the emergence of patriarchy as an intimate part of human biology. Evolutionary feminists, writers like Patricia Gowaty, Sarah Hrdy, Meredith Small, and Barbara Smuts, agree with traditional feminists about the evils of patriarchy, but they do not disconnect humans from their biological past. The logic of evolutionary feminists appreciates the rich details of patriarchal history as recounted by historian Gerda Lerner, but it simultaneously rejects the notion of plumbing the human condition through reading merely the last 6,000 years of history.

Evolutionary feminists ... would insist that people can think about the evolutionary pressures that elicit rape, for example or other forms of violence, without necessitating any absurd pronouncement that because rape is "natural" it is in any way forgivable. After all, no one considers the case of the black widow spider, who kills and eats her male counterpart after mating, to mean that murder and cannibalism are okay. ...

Patriarchy is worldwide and history-wide, and its origins are detectable in the social lives of chimpanzees. It serves the reproductive purposes of the men who maintain the system. Patriarchy comes from biology in the sense that it emerges from men's temperaments, out of their evolutionarily derived efforts to control women and at the same time have solidarity with fellow men in competition against outsiders.

(Wrangham 1996 pp 124-125)

It is interesting to consider the commentary emerging (mainly in comments but also in a few blog posts) around Rebeccapocalypse in light of this discussion. Most commenters are either on board with giving women the right to set their own level of concern about potentially dangerous men (those are the feminists) or they re busy making excuses or denying the demonic nature of male Homo sapiens. While many of the former are men (it might be about 50:50 men:women) the vast majority of the latter are men.

Just sayin'

gregladen Thu, 07/07/2011 - 05:13

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Gender and Sexual Orientation

Categories

Okay, THIS was a good article. And you didn't have to harangue Richard Dawkins (directly, anyway) even once.

I do think the label "demonic" is an unfortunate addition to the dialogue. It panders to the "male = bad" meme and distracts from all our more sterling traits. :D

I found this a very interesting post: however I have some questions about it. The hypothetical Yan/San villages seem to only deal with male violence. How do such villages react to female violent (although it might be rearer, it would hardly be non-existent' behavior. Would it be encouraged in the Yan village?

I also wonder what evidence there is for the idea that female drives are 'less dickish', as you put it. Could this not be learned behavior? After all; society is hardly equal so we lack a lot of comparising material. And the material we could leads to the thought that 'dickishness' in women's behavior has simply been more repressed by patriach societies... crime-rates among women (also in violent crimes) move up in nations that are more equal.

I'm not trying to diminish man on women violence: all 'drives' being equel women would still have a problem because of simple fysical strenght. And certainly in sexual behavior male 'drives' seem worse/stronger then females.

I focused on male behavior because that relates to the larger point. I don't think violence among women or by women against men is encouraged in Yan society, and I'm sure it is not in San society. There are societies with institutionalized female violence (The Taureg, for example.)

I also wonder what evidence there is for the idea that female drives are 'less dickish', as you put it. Could this not be learned behavior?

The evidence is overwhelming. And yes, it is all learned. For the most part, the relative scores of agonist behavior or violence between men and women are either neutral or males with more of it in every single society in which it has been examined. The degree of diffrence and the absolute degree of this behavior across societies is complex and there are many comparisons where, say, women are more diskish than men, but only when comparing across unconnected societies. Within, men are always more diskish, but sometimes not too much and not always in the same ways.

And, the mechanisms are fairly well understood, as is the overall evolutionary reason for this to be the case.

But it is all still learned. But "it" is a set of behaviors that involve managing some fairly basic drives.

And eventually the course became a book: Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence

What is it with social sciences and this fondness for vocabulary that practically demands to be misunderstood?

Thanks for the response.

Is there any data of where our own society ranks in contrast to other societies in 'agonist behavior'?

As a point of information, book publishers make up the titles of books, esp trade and mass market (this is trade). (I actually think the title is OK, but nonetheless....). Also, Wrangham is not a social scientist. He's actually trained as a zoologist.

The problem with that quesiton, G, is that "our society" is a country with subcultures and a lot of dynamic change, and much of the data to which it is compared are "cultures" that are often indpendant of national boundaries. Then there is the problem of how you count it and what you count. For instance, US or UK homicide rates are generally low compared to many "high-homicide" traditional societies. But if you throw in the dead from war the difference becomes less. Also, there are "fierce" societies with high homicide rates and "fierce" societies that have existed in a sort of equilibirium of fiercosity in which homicide is very rare, so a simple measure like homicide is not really suitable.

I generally regard US society, such as it is, as relatively fierce and violence-oriented.

"The Woman That Never Evolved" by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy is probably worth noting for such discussion, in that it gives some perspectives on the variations within the primates.

On Genes not causing behavior.
Strictly speaking true, but they sometimes seem to. I think I remember from on of Sapolsky's lectures if you divided a population into those with Monoamine Oxidase Gene Promoter type A and B. If type A was abused as kids they would abuse as adults. Abused type B would not. If you had type A and were not abused you also would not abuse.

This does not in any way detract from your excellent post.

I think I can maintain my anonymity and still share that Napolean Chagnon of Yanamo fame is my cousin, so this particular thread is near and dear to my heart just for the Fierce People shout out. Nappy and I had no contact until about 30 years ago, were raised two time zones apart and birm 25 years apart yet he and I share many, many similarities in personality and character including a certain arrogance often associated with those of French Canaddian descent. Ultimately, though, we were raised in essentially the same culture. The biological component of limbic system vs modern brain balance may be persuasive to some - but mankind is still largely segregated and cultural anthropology is still a young science. How can there be any doubt but that cultural norms guide natural drives into more and less locally-acceptable channels? I am extremely competitive, have a terrible tempe r and I am horny as the day is long, yet I would never presume to proposition a woman - much less commit rape or murder - without a firm. longstanding personal relationship and multiple, clear and unambiguous signals that the overture is welcome. Because that is how I was raised<\i>.

Dammit, ManOOT: If you were a girl, you could be Chag's suaboya!@!!!!!

Lots of cultures out there. Too bad Watson hadn't learned to be tolerant of the differences among them. Over in a different thread "Raging B" is using language that I was brought up (not "raised") to avoid. She's creeping me out.

If EG was a local, there is a better than even chance that his comment would have been intended ironically (based on my nine months in Great Britain) and *not* as a proposition. Greg noted this way back in post #1 but seem to have forgotten his gut reaction.

--bks

bks, you lost any moral high ground on creeping people out when you offered a woman coffee in another thread. Stop playing the victim.

Greg @7:

'I generally regard US society, such as it is, as relatively fierce and violence-oriented.'

No doubt. When there's a question of whether children should have unrestricted access to violent content in games - and when it's actually debated as a valid question to consider in the first place - you know you're dealing with a social milieu that's casual about violence. In order to be that casual, you have to be inured. To be inured, you have to be saturated.

We've been directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths over the last decade, and no one really cares. A fifteen-year-old boy is killed for sport, the people who did it are caught on camera in boastful poses beside his corpse, and all we get is a 'meh'.

US society, such as it is, is sociopathic, and just as likely to kill brutally as it is to commit rape (and, almost as likely, to do both in no particular order). If it were an individual person, it would be locked away in an institution for the rest of its life.

Nonetheless, this same society is loaded to the top with those who will justify everything that takes place here. Which means that, rather than exerting a sort of social conscience on the actions of this society, the denial simply increases and the sociopathy deepens.

Mitchell and Webb, in a sketch, asked a question that we might want to consider from time to time as well:

http://www.spikednation.com/evideo/mitchell-and-webb-are-we-baddies

Meh. Without men being "dickish" the entire damn race would have succumbed to infectious microorganisms millions of years ago, just like every other complex species. There's a damn good reason for it, and the alternative is much, much worse, regardless of how "demonic" how half the species may be conveniently labeled.

Horrors! I've lost the "moral high ground" for offering a woman coffee in a thread. I think Stephanie Z has pegged the harridan-o-meter.

--bks

No doubt. When there's a question of whether children should have unrestricted access to violent content in games - and when it's actually debated as a valid question to consider in the first place - you know you're dealing with a social milieu that's casual about violence.

Or that has outgrown the concept of Sympathetic Magic.

Meh. Without men being "dickish" the entire damn race would have succumbed to infectious microorganisms millions of years ago, just like every other complex species. There's a damn good reason for it, and the alternative is much, much worse, regardless of how "demonic" how half the species may be conveniently labeled.

Do I even want to know why you imagine that a propensity for rape and other forms of violence has a protective effect against disease?

Because, um, rape and warfare have been some of the most serious and efficient spreaders of disease throughout history.

BOYCOTT AMERICAN WOMEN
Why American men should boycott American women

http://boycottamericanwomen.blogspot.com

I am an American man, and I have decided to boycott American women. In a nutshell, American women are the most likely to cheat on you, to divorce you, to get fat, to steal half of your money in the divorce courts, donât know how to cook or clean, donât want to have children, etc. Therefore, what intelligent man would want to get involved with American women?

American women are generally immature, selfish, extremely arrogant and self-centered, mentally unstable, irresponsible, and highly unchaste. The behavior of most American women is utterly disgusting, to say the least.

This blog is my attempt to explain why I feel American women are inferior to foreign women (non-American women), and why American men should boycott American women, and date/marry only foreign (non-American) women.

BOYCOTT AMERICAN WOMEN!

[spam deleted]

Rambo: If you reload this page again and again there is a reasonable chance that eventually you'll see an ad for mail order brides. But I'm not sure what makes you think that non-American women would see you as any less of a piece of dog shit stuck to the bottom of the shoe than American women do.

Thus, one could say that since humans are behaviorally derived with respect to many traits in comparison to African apes in general, a major feature of the human brain must be mechanisms telling the rest of the brain, to some extent every minute of the day, "Don't be a chimp .... Don't be a chimp. Seriously, dood ... don't be a chimp."

I think, based on some observations from Robert Sapolsky and other guys like Frans de Waal to cite two whose names I can remember, that perhaps this isn't that specifically human in a way. Well, actually, perhaps it wouldn't be exactly "it", but rather a more widespread flexibility of behavior depending upon the upbringing and the current environment.

Sapolsky mentions a "tribe" of babboons that were exceptional by being lead by females, which tend to be more docile. In turn, that group was somewhat bonoboesque, much less stressed than the average baboons. I wonder if we couldn't raise chimps to behave like bonobos and vice versa, at least to some degree.

And I think it's not so unlike raising a dog to be docile rather than aggressive. Dog breeds that were selected for their fighting abilities are not significantly inherently, innately more aggressive, it seems to be mostly their phyisical built, even though there are theories positing that pitbulls might be "psychopaths", not able to read the expressions of other dogs (from any breed) -- but I doubt it.

And that happens to some extent even with animals that were never domesticated, like tigers or lions created in captivity, albeit they're surely more dangerous than a pitbull when they want just to play.

Not that I don't think that there's a hardwired difference giving more control from other brain regions or "patterns" over the regions or patterns controling the more basic drives, I just think that the clear-cut line on "humans" usually exaggerates the difference.

(In a way that creationists would simple love, but that's not even with I had in mind initially,but just nuance for nuance's sake)

However, deviating or adding an important addendum to the concluding part regarding demonic males and rape, I think that there may be an important distinction between "making excuses or denying the demonic nature of male Homo sapiens" and stressing that, even though males can be said to be more demonical, it's far from being the case that "all males are potential rapists", not in the sense that anyonce could theoretically have an upbringing that would make of him a rapist, but that actually anyone, irrespective of their upbringing, is more or less equally likely to rape once in a while. This idea seems to be rather common. We westerns live in a "rape culture", and everything, from kids posing with their thumbs up under the legs of the statue of an upskirt giant Marilyn Monroe to Newton's principia, are somehow connected to this horrid omnipresent rape culture.

Rape is supposedly a weapon of male domination over women, in a socio-political way. These misconceptions are comprehensible in part from the fact that rapists don't use "rapist tags", so they look just like anyone. And mistaken explanations aren't hard to come by and can be rather sticky depending of the popularity of who proposes it, something possibly aggravated when such explanation regards some aspect of the situation of a group that hadn't the same rights of white men for some time.

But the reality is that most rapists seem to be serial rapists, and most rapes are commited by those rapists, not by the male population at large. Fortunately some feminists seem (and another one) to be open to such reality, which is quite important if we're interested in preventing rape and not creating healh damaging stress based on nothing but a menace of a conspirational theory of rape been used ideologically as a weapon to oppress females. And even worse than just stress, prevention campaigns doomed to fail, based on notions such as that "not raping" is more or less a matter of etiquette -- a somewhat closely associated notion, even though it either assumes that males are willing to give up their dominance over society, or does not assume that rape is such a tool to begin with, but rather the somewhat more realistic view that it has to do with sexual drive, while still assuming that it's tractable by campaigns addressing men as a whole and asking them to be polite and not rape. At the same time that a summary of the literature seems is that "[t]he situation is even worse with respect to rapists in particular. There is simply no convincingevidence that treatment has ever caused rapists to desist or even to reduce their offending behavior" (Gregory DeClue, reviewing "The Causes of Rape: Understanding IndividualDifferences in Male Propensity for Sexual Aggression,by Martin L. Lalumiere, Grant T. Harris, Vernon L. Quinsey,and Marnie E. Rice"). But perhaps we just didn't attempt to ask them please not to, like those signs "society teaches 'don't get raped', rather than 'do not rape'" have pointed.

It ended out being longer than I thought I should, and perhaps not clear enough. To sum up regarding the whole Dawkinsgate/elevatorgate thing, yes, I think Dawkins' comments were quite idiotic. Despite of the fact that the danger of rape isn't omnipresent in males (which isn't even something Watson implied as far as I know), and even that our culture isn't quite the more forgiving towards rape, all that she was saying is that such approach is quite weird and potentially creepy, even if the guy didn't "followed" her there (as a feminist blogger seem to have been augmenting). This is just common sense advice, really, don't be creepy. You don't invite unknown people to your bedroom for coffee out of the blue in an elevator. Granted, you possibly would not be so troubled by that if the sexes were switched, but even though the initiative of trying to put yourself in someone else's shoes is admirable, try consider the idea of some 220 pounds gay male jiu-jitsu fighter inviting you to to a cup of coffee on his bedroom for more close notion of the sort of creepiness it can produce to a woman. Regardless, I don't buy the feminist discourse wholesale (there isn't even a single "feminism" anyway, despite of being frequently implied such consensus), and I think it often lacks some healthy inner criticism. If you try to do it "from the outside", you're going to be harassed, does not matter what your intentions are, does not matter thay you want equal rights for women, you're for programs activelly reducing inequalities, and even if you're for death penalty or life sentences for rape. The entire discussion culd be much more civilized, without the other side being always being labeled as misoginistic/"rape enabler"/"victim-blamers"/defending male privilege" or whatever.

The "don't be an X" thing is certainly a feature of mammalian brains in general, which sadly means that a certain amount of the increase in brain size we see across some mammal groups over time is probably just a bunch of repression and not any kind of increase in intelligence.

Realizing this is a mostly science based blog, it does enter into the world of humanities. Religious beliefs i noticed are not a contributing factor in any of this, and which i believe have a huge factor in behavior.
The "Demonic Males" part of this is what caught my eye, yet not much has been said about the spiritual side of us.
The information out there that sides with the human race being gentically altered through the cross-breading of angelic beings and man, shows why we have a sinful/barbaric/ nature about us. The fallen angels were demonic, and have planted within us their very nature.
There is still many parts of our genome that is unknown to us, is it not possible some of these parts contain the "evil" gene we all have?

What "information out there"?

The Book of Enoch, The Bible, Sumerian writings, ancient writings from egypt, and writings from various other cultures (too many to list), there is scientific precedents
that suggest evil could be inherited through Thalassaemia.

I don't think you and I are using "evidence" and "scientific" the same way.

I suggested info, in reguards not as evidence OR scientific.
You asked "what info", not what was "scientific" or what "evidence"
I was merely stating i wish i would have seen a more rounded conclusion involving the spiritual part of our nature.

Greg, I have a few questions about this rape switch theory.
1) does it apply to women in other ways? Do women also have these switches
2) why didn't you include bonobo behavior in the hypothesis as a comparison or a control? Bonobos fuck everyone,including their children, all day long.
3) Do you have any resources you can point me too about female versus male violence in chimps?
4) is it possible under your theory that women have bonobo- like responses too? Like a rub vaginas, switch, or a rub vaginas with infants switch, or a fuck your sisters son switch?
5) what if womens, i.e. peace-loving, non rapist bonobos, 'drives' are repressed, could we extrapolate that behavior to humans as well? Like 'women have a rub kids genitals switch'?

Interesting article. Well-written. I think you're underestimating the power females are capable of exerting over males, as well as the effect of living standards on the male tendency toward violence. Elevatorgate, at this point, is really about males aligning themselves with different females. The issue of Rebecca's subjective experience of perceived objectification has not been the primary driving force for the females aligned with the "misogynist" males. Rather, it has been her mistreatment of others, and I think it's been building for a while.

Your concept of drives is inadequately developed. For instance, you fail to distinguish between adaptive responses such as anger and fear, and internally driven impulses such as thirst and hunger. How do these interact? Are the internally driven impulses primary, while adaptive reactions secondary? Is it more complex than that? Would you agree with the statement that our behavior is the result of our biological makeup, determined by genes and shaped by environmental forces?

Aside from the statistics you pull out of thin air in the last paragraph, very nice work. I enjoyed reading this piece.

@DS: Excellent comment. I agree on almost every point.

this is contrived, ignorant, and blatant sexism against males. this article seems to be an assumption driven nightmare formed from the remains of a bad breakup or betrayal of some sort, and not legitimate emotionally neutral theory and most CERTAINLY not a fact this is ridiculous
indeed

okay thats a little harsh perhaps my apologies but clean this up do ALOT more research take out the emotional aspect after this isnt supposed too be a literary class or art class its "culture as science~science as culture" and i dont mean to offend you by this but if your going to use science as a descriptor for this topic then please be scientific cite your sources, and cut out the rhetoric and emotional context and stick to the bare facts with thought as a side note the important thing is emotional neutrality when speaking on those terms and quite literally demonizing a group of individuals in such a manner is outright wrong

alexander: Neutral theory?

You speak as though you think I just thought about these issues for the first time and decided to apply science, which I just discovered, to them. This tells me something about your style of argument.

I am an human evolutionary biologist with adaptationist tendencies and a disdain for EEA based evolutionary psychology. You need to re-calibrate your response, which I welcome you to do.

No, alexander, you're not being "harsh"...just incredibly stupid, totally unaware of what's actually been said here, and -- like so many hyperemotional MRAs -- laughably late to the discussion as well as unwilling to listen.

It looks like the MRAs are running out of places to troll...

This is a very interesting article, and I agree that one does associate violent behavior with the male gender. I would think it is because when we think of boys growing up, they are always taught not to cry and âbe a man,â and be tough. Normally, the more violent sports, such as wrestling, boxing, and football are male dominated. I think one can look at this situation as a case of nature vs. nurture. Boys and girls are nurtured differently. Boys are brought up to be tougher, stronger, and more protective over girls, whereas girls are taught to be more delicate, proper, and almost vulnerable in a way. Men are supposed to be the protector, so it would make sense that they are more violent. I think it all depends on oneâs past experiences and perception of the world. Perceptions change over time based on past experiences. I believe this is what leads to the exceptions (more violent females and less violent males).

Awesome explanation of agricultural revolution, which helped fuel patriarchy and gender deviation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yocja_N5s1I

It's interesting that for years there has been a biological argument for same-sex attraction being played out in winning gay rights, but a huge denial and minimization of biological arguments for respecting the differences between male and female drives. If attachment theory understands the underlying biological drive to survive through building attachment bonds and gay genetic arguments can claim that attraction is biologically driven, isn't it hypocritical to then say that boys only learn behaviors and they don't have biological drives that underlie their behaviors?

If somebody said that, they would be both hypocritical and committing a number of fallacies, and they would rather lack nuance.

On the other hand, reference to deep genetics does an abysmal job of explaining variation.

Dear Sir,

There must be some degree of determinism for most males across must species are usually more aggressive territorial and violent. Also the levels of testosterone do impact aggressivity levels in men on average. This has been proven by studies of testosterone levels of men in prison. Don't genes affect the amount of testosterone a male has? I'm not saying all men with high-T are violent; some harness these drives and become more driven, but yet disciplined.

Speaking of Demonic Males...
Males across species often compete in some form to attract females. Most of this behavior therefor must be attributed to the Y-chromosome. Wouldn't that be genetic?
In order to get rid of the "Demonic Male" you'd have to get rid of the Y chromosome in the entire Kingdom Animalia. And then unfortunately everything would go extinct. There has to be some aggressivity in most species, otherwise they wouldn't be able to protect themselves from predation. They would go the way of the Dodo Bird.

In regards to the violent nature of men...we do have a few noble traits, we used to protect females and young from predators....but are no natural predators other than ourselves anymore...But what about disasters? Men today still would sacrifice themselves to protect women and children. There has to be some way to verify this because I do believe men are more willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of women and children. Occasionally a good man will protect a woman and child from bad man or on even rarer occasions, he might even slay a beast praying upon women in children...but, that's rare today and may be why Romance went extinct. We all know a woman would love a man that would die for her.
But let's say the feminist find a way to multiply through cloning.
If we neuter every male, then won't risk taking behavior that is necessary go extinct. What do I mean? What about Space Exploration?...In a way, that may take more Balls than Brains. Might we become too complacent and less "driven" and still go extinct in the process when the environment collapses under our weight.

What does survival of the fittest entail? Did we get to this position as the dominant species by being sweet, cuddly, and non-violent creatures? I'm not going to answer that one, I'm just being Captain Obvious.

Any man that wouldn't chop the head off a venomous snake if children are nearby is completely worthless, at the very least he could trap it and relocate it, but that would take the male behavioral trait known as bravery, which feminist refer to as stupidity. Yes, you do have to have more balls than brains when dealing with snakes, but I do believe this species needs those "Domonic" traits, otherwise we still may go the way of the Dodo Bird.

Yes, indeed, there must be some determination, which is part of the reason we have the global patterns we have. But the key point here is that one's explanation ideally explains most of the variance in what we are observing, and a mainly genetic-determinist approach fails to explain the overall pattern very well.

In the chimp studies that link to the Demonic Male idea, the male violence is not very much related to competing for females, but rather, for resources.

The sacrificing for women and children thing is probably a cultural trope that varies a lot across societies and circumstances, and I doubt that it applies generally.

You raise a lot of interesting questions, but the point of this post is to point out the nuances and complexities that we need to address, rather than simply equating male vs. female behavior simplistically across the board. Human relationships and gendered behavior are much more like we find in many song birds than what we find in deer, for example, but the temptation to equate human sexual or competitive behavior to the ungulates is strong and misguided. And, we need to be very careful about mapping observed features onto underlying biology without careful thought and study (such as the "men as savior" idea, which really does vary a lot across societies, times, places, and circumstances)

One more thing, humans are partially Matriarchal as the Bonobo is. Mothers are the first teacher unlike Freud's idea of the Patriarchal father being the teacher. Even as an infant we come to understand warmth, comfort, and eventually love from the mother. There are underlying Matriarchal cultural teachings such as being nurturing toward children and teaching them very young. In chimpanzee culture it is usually the females that teach how to do things such as cracking open nuts to their young ones. I believe it was much latter in our evolutionary history that males usurped the female monopoly on teaching the young.

I do believe women are trying today to usurp male dominance on being a provider or leader; it is happening now, but in the process I believe women will develop more aggressive drives to put food on the table and maintain a job in a competitive atmosphere.

Even males have female psyche traits, usually, such as fathers are tender and nurturing in addition to being protective. I learned a lot from women...these teachings are cultural. There is a Matriarchy, especially, in western culture where women can lead and be dominant in some form.

There however are some negative consequences to the Matriarchy, for instance, the imperative to keep children safe has lead to the demolition of playgrounds. Children need to be able to take risks and explore, it is a part of the learning process. Also, the competitive drive may become diminished if we insist too heavily on equality rather than fairness. America is already becoming complacent,less driven, and dependent on the "Mother" State. This will and is leading to decline if it is not put in check. We'll see.

Sir, I would also point out that you are being protective of women when you refer to men as being "Demonic." You are displaying some, at least, passive aggressivity when you do this. You didn't even notice that the demon inside of you does have noble traits...Ding Dong...Oops a display.

In many societies there is a strong matriarchal component. Matrilinality is very rare and is never a mirror image of patrilinality. But very importantly, this, again, varies a lot across societies, times, and circumstances. One of the great lessons of anthropology is that this can not be generalized.

I don't know of any playgrounds that were demolished by the matriarchy, please elaborate, sounds interesting!

I'm very aware of my passive aggressive attacks on the patriarchy, by the way. :)

Thank you for commenting back. Yes, a lot of this behavior I'm referring to is cultural. However, there are animal examples. The male Colobus monkey will protect the young and females from predation. They will often fight Adutl Male Chimpanzeees 4 times their size to the death in order to protect the young and females.

Perhaps it would be easier to illistrate protective drives in nature, due to the fact we no longer have any natural predators to display this behavior.

I'm am a father, I know for a fact this is a strong underlying drive. I would, Sir, die for my kids if I had to. How do we quantify this and measure it? Perhaps we could look up Police reports where men have died protecting women and children and count and then compare it to how many women did the same...As I've said, women do have some aspects of the male protective instinct. Many women also would die protecting their own kids. But yes, men, Culturally are expected to do this more. To separate it from culture or base drive would be the hard part and would take cross cultural studies.

Thank You for your Repy

The Matriarchy is a cultural theme that promotes more of the nurturing side of man...but it's woman. The Matriarchy is a societal Superego if you will. It is mostly feminine. Matriarchal culture can include Liberalism. What do you think the Patriarchy would be? It's mostly Conservative of course....

You're culture is predominantly Matriarchal. You would rather nurture people and help people (Matri) rather than punish them or push them (Patri). I can tell you have integrated the Liberal feminine culture within yourself. Regarding political opinions you are mostly siding with women. Look, I'm mostly liberal too, so don't take it the wrong way, however, I'm shifting moderate because I see the extreme side of feminism and it's nothing good, just like extreme conservatism. ..If you want to have my stinky opinion.

I have a slightly different definition of personal culture. Personal culture is the things you were taught and still believe. This knowledge and moral belief system was taught first by your parents, then teachers, peers, and now its reinforced through academia.
Look, feminist are telling NFL what to do; they hold IMMENSE POWER. Look they're throwing out labels and generalizing a whole population....apparent all men are child abusers, wife beaters, rapist, murders, and everything evil in the world. You say we shouldn't generalize and stereo type right? This is a homo-social(they don't know a man's perspective) man hating culture. There is also this so called "Rape Epidemic" on College Campuses when the FBI is telling us sexual crime is on the decline, especially rape...Rape Statistics are at an all time LOW. GO LOOK IT UP FOR YOURSELF IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE ME.

This is so depressing and disturbing as man. Why? College used to be where "Peace, LOVE!!!, and happiness," reined supreme, There used to be free love everywhere in the the late 60's - early 70's....NOW EVERY MAN IS A POTENTIAL RAPIST...AAHHHH!!! NO!!! WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE SMOKING? OMG, SOMEBODY LACED THE ENTIRE CAMPUS WITH LSD AND THEY'RE FREAKING OUT.

Apparently if you haven't noticed this is all a highly charged political movement. People will lie, steal, and cheat regarding politics...Exhibit A: The Rolling Stone published rape allegations that turned out to be COMPLETELY FALSE.
Exhibit B: FBI Rape Statistics- ALL TIME LOW
Exhibit C: Reported Rape on campuses the past 10 yrs---declining.
How much evidence do need? I can keep going

This is far beyond disturbing in another way. We live in a Victim Centric Culture (Matriarchy). People who cry rape aren't put on a polygraph. Both the alleged perpetrator and the alleged victim need to be put on a polygraph. What's worse, getting raped, or doing polygraph to catch the guy? If the woman didn't lie; what does she have to fear? Half the time, Law Enforcement doesn't even do a rape kit and just take the woman's word for it. This is not Justice.

Listen, I like equality and fairness too, but this isn't it at all. This is a pure violation of human rights. The only reason this still has momentum, is men feel guilty for having a penis...this is absurd. Men can't even think about a woman sexually anymore without being stigmatized...It's to the point that heterosexual men are being slammed for being straight. Feminist equate all male lust as rape or some other perversion. It's sickening. Have you heard how these women talk about men? Have you been listening to NPR lately? Its a freaking nightmare or something from Clock Work Orange.

You, sir, have some admiral qualities as a MAN. Are completely evil too? Perhaps you should refer to yourself as The Demonic Male...Muu hahahahah. Join Satan and his minions, sir, for you yourself are a demonic male...the only way you get out of this club is to cut your balls and penis off, Sorry.

Look, feminist are telling NFL what to do

That alone is sufficient reason to not take anything you say seriously.

Falsehoods: Human Universals

gregladen — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 15:26:03 +0000

Falsehoods: Human Universals

There are human universals. There, I said it. Now give me about a half hour to explain why this is both correct and a Falsehood. But first, some background and definition.

Most simply defined, a human universal is a trait, behavior or cultural feature that we find in all human societies. Men are always on average larger than women. All humans see the same exact range of colors because our eyes are the same. The range of emotions experienced by people is the same, and appears in facial expressions and other outward affect, in the same way across all humans.

The term "Human Universal" shows up in Google Ngram (a rather course but very fun data mining tool) as appearing in books in about 1830 but not before, with sporadic occurrences until just after World Word II, when, presumably because of the rise of professionalized anthropology and sociology, it demonstrated a steady increase to the present. This increase is interrupted by what is probably a non-random drop in the mid 1980s followed by a spike I presume to be associated with the publication of Donald Brown's monograph, "Human Universals." in 1991. I'm not sure if Ngram's failure as a data mining tool during the early 2000's, or if the publication of Steven Pinker's pro genetic deterministic book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature caused a sudden drop off in the use of the term over the last few years.

From World War II on, the phrases "genetic determinism" and "human universal" have very similar patterns of appearance in books, according to the Ngram viewer, but with the former having been much more popular. And, I mention that phrase here mainly to point out that the two terms are very different.

Now let's refer back to the aforementioned definition and examples (color vision, male vs. female size, emotions and facial expressions). The first thing to ask is, can exceptions be allowed? Necessarily, yes. Color blindness (or blindness in general) does not obviate the universal biology of eye function. Individuals can be exceptions to any rules. But what about entire cultures or populations of humans that are different? It turns out that the list of emotions one would derive from a careful study of a group of people would be different depending on which culture you look at. Does this mean that emotions are not universals? Well, even though there would be differences, the fact remains that most cultures would be similar, and the few cultures that are different are different in ways that do not overthrow any generalized understanding of emotions, how they work, what they do, and how they function in society. It might be a little like going across the Iron Curtain into the old Soviet Union and looking at cars. The cars would all look just like cars back home and operate in the same way yet none of the models and makes would be familiar to an American from Detroit. Does the relationship between the parts of a hypothetical universal have to be the same everywhere? Hopefully not. On average, men are always larger than women in any sufficiently large and "normal" population, but there is often overlap. However, the absolute size of people in general and the relative size of men vs. women seems to vary across populations, with some having very large difference and others having very small differences.

So, our simple definition of a human universal holds as long as we are willing to allow at least three dimensions of variation or exception: Individuals can be exceptions, there can be some cross cultural variation, and the details can vary in important ways, so long as the universal is defined in a way that allows for it.

But at the same time, even this surfical look at a small number of examples indicates that the concept of a "Human Universal" is not the same as a species-specific genetically determined trait. Such a concept would be like asserting that the way emotions are expressed by humans is as invariant and predictable as the number of bones in an adult human, which we assume is always exactly the same from person to person.

Or is it? Actually, the number of ribs, vertebrae, teeth, and sigmoid bones varies from person to person, even if not counting rare pentadactylism, amputation, or other differences. So if something as basic and "biological" as bone count per person varies, we should be able to handle a widespread human trait as a "human universal" even if East Asian people grin under stress more often than do Englishmen (who scowl when they are happy because they wear hair shirts), or if the number of colors commonly and widely recognized in a given culture varies from three to dozens.

The color example is a classic, and for a good reason. Many groups of people tend to name only a small number of colors, yet they are physically capable of seeing the same colors as anyone else. The Efe Pygmies, for instance, while being experts on their own natural environment and able to identify thousands of species of plants and animals perfectly, only have specific words for red, white or black. They live in the rain forest but don't have a word for green. Of course, on further inspection, they DO have a word for green, it's just not distinct. They call green things "leaf colored." And, they can and do call things "skin colored" or "dirt colored" and so on. In a sense, claiming that they don't have more than a few colors is like saying that Martha Stewart doesn't have neutral pastel color paint because these paints happen to be called "Morning Walk" (not a color, but a adverb/verb or adjective/noun), "Ash Bark" (not a color but a tree part), "Feldspar" (not a color but a kind of rock), "Wampum" (not a color but a form of Native American currency), and "Mink" (not a color but a fur bearing animal).

But still, different cultures do have different distinct color name lists, and you can more or less organize cultures by how many colors they have, and when you do this, you find that the cultures with the smallest number of colors tend to have black and white, then black and white and red, then those three and either green or yellow, then all those including green AND yellow, then they add blue, then they add brown, then purple, pink, orange or gray. Eventually, you get to the cultures with the most colors, and there you find colors named after fur bearing animals and verbs.

Color vision is a human universal, but a trivial one. This is like saying that all humans having a head is a human universal. But color naming is also thought of as a human universal to the extent that all cultures follow the above described pattern, even if cultures are very different from each other in this area. Furthermore, the theory goes, this pattern is followed because of the nature of the rods and cones in our eyes. (Read Brown for a more detailed explanation.) And there probably is something to this.

Color naming could be thought of as a pattern of additive complexity, or complexity on demand, shaped by the nature of the physical environment (the way light works and the way the eye works) in which the phenomenon plays out, but the magnitude of the elaboration determined by culture. If we found a culture in which there were only six named colors and none of them were black, white, or red, would we have to disqualify color naming as a universal? Well, if you don't like the idea of human universals, then you may want to say yes, it's all or nothing. However, most likely such a culture would have such a naming system for some special and interesting reason.

Which brings us to sex. Or at least, a small digression I'd like to make regarding sex. Human Universal: Most sex that is not auto-erotic is between a man and a woman. Exception: The anonymous culture in New Guinea (sometimes called the "Sambia") in which men try their hardest to have sex with women as few times as absolutely necessary to reproduce, but otherwise only have oral sex delivered by boys below a certain age. A tiny minority of sex is between men and women. Now, seriously, would the existence of that culture, and it does exist, obviate generalizations about human sexuality? Or, would it make you ask questions about that one particular culture, and perhaps even question the validity of your cultural relativism to some extent? Seriously.

The relative size of men and women is due to developmental differences between men and women and there is a great deal to say about it (which we'll skip). For our present purposes, it is exemplary of an interesting kind of human universal that demonstrates both the validity of the concept and ways in which the concept becomes unnecessarily constraining in how we think about humans.

Early anthropologists (Mead, Benedict, etc.) made the case that human culture was so flexible that wholesale reversals in sex roles across entire cultures could be found (reversals from the western expected norm, that is). So they found those cultures in the Pacific. However, further study of the cultures in which the women were supposedly doing all the guy stuff and the men were supposedly doing all the girl stuff showed that these early anthropologists were, in the main, wrong: There are no documented sex reversal cultures in the Pacific. Indeed, a close read of Benedict and Mead won't even find clear cut cases, though the derived literature and popularization of it, and Mead in some public appearances, would give that impression.

It is true, however, that if you measure "maleness" and "femaleness" (as gender spectra) of people in a bunch of different cultures, it is not hard to find one culture where the men are more female than the females of some other culture, or women in one culture that are more male then men of some other culture. And, how "male" vs. "female" actual males and females are may be very divergent by genetic sex, or less different, and some traits may demonstrate vast gender differences and others less, depending on the culture.

But no matter what you do, you will always find that the usual lists of male vs. female distinguishing traits fall in relation to each other the same way in every culture, where men are more male and women are more female, by a little or by a lot, but always with the same polarity. Always. Except for the exceptions, of course, which are actually quite rare.

So there is an overall pattern of gender roles found across cultures that is a human universal, but no one culture can be used to predict the exact pattern for any unknown culture. The patterns of gender roles is probably often shaped by certain features. Ocean fishing cultures, vs. forest horticultural cultures, vs grassland pastoral cultures vs. arid country forager cultures ... will probably have internally similar patterns of gender roles (and other social roles). This is because some underlying set of male and female potentials, needs, vulnerabilities, requirements, limitations, etc. plays out in roughly similar ways given similar contexts, economies, externalizes, etc. Add a bit of history and some random chance and you get a complex, mosaic-like mostly post hoc but somewhat predictive pattern of gender role tendencies across the human species. With the usual exceptions.

So the male-female difference demonstrates, messily, the kind of human universal that arises from some pretty basic biological factors (penis or vagina? lactation? paternity anxiety?) when played out across an entire planet of crazy humans.

The emotion example demonstrates something else about human universals. This is the link between some rather well known neurological and endocrine systems, the broader phylogenetic context (humans as mammals, humans as primates, etc.) and the strange tension between the arbitrary nature of human communication (the linguistic) and the non-arbitrary nature of our bodies.

All mammals have limbic systems and endocrine (hormone) systems, and they are pretty similar across the groups that have been studied well. The "emotions" are the output of the limbic systems. Your larynx and pharynx makes your voice, your legs are how you walk, your limbic system does the emotions. At some scale most, perhaps all, mammals have the same basic emotions. There are four of them, and there is a mnemonic to remember what they are: The Four F's. Fleeing, Fighting, Feeding and Sex.

But of course, this is an oversimplification, and there is some neurological and circumstantial evidence that emotions can be very derived, and even entirely new ones present, in some mammals. For instance, in cats the "affective attack" behavior is probably like human rage, but plays out very different. Cats have a "quiet biting" attack emotional state that human hunters and soldiers mimic but that is probably not a separate basic emotion in humans. And when I say "cats have this emotion" what I mean is that you can see them do it in the wild and you can consistent replicate the emotion by inserting a needle in a certain part of the brain and giving it a bit of juice.

So human emotions can be, and should be, understood in the wider pattern of mammalian emotions, though I think a lot of people don't understand that. It is often assume that emotion are entirely constructed from cultural experience. They are not. But the exact set of emotion that are typically experienced and the way in which they play out can be very much affected by cultural experience. Sexual Jealousy is a human universal ... it is widely found and makes biological sense, is linked to visceral effects like other emotions, etc. But how sexual jealousy plays out or even if it is important seems to vary a great deal across cultures. Malu is arguably an emotion that exists only in a certain Indonesian culture, though it is like emotions found elsewhere (overlaps with "shame" and "honor"). And the affective state linked to emotions can vary. The scene in Platoon where a young man is killed because of his smile comes to mind.

Sexual jealousy would be an emotion that in some cases has a very important, adaptive, even central role in culture (in some cultures). The fact that East Asians grin/smile in a way that Westerners may not understand is not a cultural adaptation but rather a product of cultural drive (I assume), and Malu is a highly derived culture-bound form of some more basic emotion that all humans probably experience. But the fact that a genetic analogy works to describe these behaviors, and despite the fact that they are biological (in having their own organ, as it were, the limbic system) does not make these differences genetically determined. Indonesians do not have a gene for malu and French people a gene for sexual jealousy.

Which brings us to the concept of determinism. I used to hang out a lot with a client scientist who was always talking about determinism and how he was amused at the way in which social scientists repelled at the concept. In truth, the social scientists were being repelled at a different concept (that they called determinism) than what my friend Kerry was thinking. But he did make a valid point: When we think about things that matter, there is often a cause, and the structure of cause and effect is a matter of determinism. This is different than predestination. The fact that the overall structure of emotions is determined by genes does not obviate the equally valid fact that the overall structure of emotions is determined by experience. One kind of determinism is not the "correct" one or the more powerful one or the one that matters, though you will hear most people involved in this sort of discussion demanding that it does. And, whether or not something is a human universal is an entirely separate question than the details of what determines it.

Apartment building mice build, when living colonially, a complex warren with a specific engineered pattern of spatial relatioships between individual borrows, looking like tiny apartments in a large housing development. Termintes build incredibly complex systems of air cooled/air heated underground farms and birthing areas. The mice make their apartments by having a single behavior .... just one ... that, when they live in a group makes the aprartments form quite incidentally, but I would argue that the making of apartments when living in a group is a "mouse universal" for that species. No termite or even group of termintes has a blueprint for a complex termitary system, but they manage to always make one anyway. The termitaries are universal to the termites, and each species has a species universal pattern of termitary, yet the termitaries ... how they look and function ... are determined by a handful of very simple (genetically coded) behaviors and context.

Certainly, there are human universals that are entirely non-genetic or that have entirely trivial genetic components. They are difficult to identify because once determinism comes into play in the discussion, everything is viewed by the interlocutors as "obviously genetic" or "clearly constructed." Not helpful.

Human universals are real and they are important. They are important because figuring out how and why they exist at all reveals how individual humans, groups, and "cultures" function. They tell us about common experiences that may not be as obvious if we don't recognize the universals, such as how shame, jealousy, malu, honor, and so on reveal the society shaping of what is considered normal. An understanding of human universals can be an exercise in calibration. The entire anthropological experience, with its relativism and its "outside" perspective is roughly equivalent to the observation of human behavior in relation to things that are universals and things that are not.

Kissing is not a human universal yet is built from parts that are. Homicide and rape are human universals yet they happen (usually) because of highly unusual circumstances. In the former, the actual "universal(s)" are unseen to us. Something about bodily fluids, or a drive for closeness, or some feature of risk or trust come together to cause the mushing of lips to serve as a tool for bonding (of many different kinds) in many but not all culture. Who kills or rapes whom and under what circumstances tends to follow very predictable patterns across cultures and contexts (but with very different incidence) but the specific contextual variables that determine this behavior to actually happen are almost always quirky.

So, human universals are real and the concept is useful, yet they are not what many people assume they are ... they are not generically determined traits. They never were thought of as either simplistic genetically determined features of human culture or utterly invalid, by any camp in anthropology. The phrase "Human Universal" is a dog whistle only in limited contexts, though it is probably seen as one more widely, which is problematic. And here, by complexifying the concept, I'm not trying to weaken it, nor am I trying to slip it past any perceived PC police. Mainly, like with most of the Falsehoods, I have tried to expose some of the interesting inner workings of the topic at hand. In this sense, the concept of "human universal" is a reasonably useful tool functioning in a way somewhere between pick=axe and well placed dynamite.

gregladen Wed, 01/26/2011 - 10:26

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Could I ask you to clarify what evidence you have that Mead and Benedict were "making it all up" regarding South Pacific culture? Not even Derek Freeman (whose work is largely discredited) would say such a thing. Can you be more specific as to what you are actually claiming here?

The assertion that there are cultures with sex role reversals is not true. That is specifically what I was referring to, and JD Freeman would agree with that. Perhaps I could rephrase that better to not look like I'm referring to all of their work.

J. Derek Freeman's work has not been largely discredited. His case may have been overstated but not to the degree of Mead's, and that seems to be how it goes with these things for better or worse. I'm not aware of Freeman's criticism of Benedict.

There. Revised to address J. Jackson's comment.

Thanks for the clarification. I don't want to hijack the thread into a discussion of Freeman, but I think very few anthropologists, and even fewer anthropologists who study the South Pacific, think much of his critique of Mead. He is still cited all over the place, but I think I'm right in saying that those who know a lot of about the specific topics he discusses think he got it right.

For example Paul Shankman's book:
http://books.google.com/books?id=aPDkYtaZFngC&lpg=PP1&dq=trashing%20of%…

got down into the real nitty-gritty of the claims and finds Freeman's case to be very, very misleading and based on little, if any actual evidence.

Ok, I'll shut up about it now.

Not much to say here, except that you've got "fleeing" twice in the four F's. Silly mistake, but it nattered at me through the rest of the article.

Out of curiosity (a cultural universal?), I'd like to know what sources you have on the interesting least-amount-of-coitus-possible-strictly-for-continuity culture in New Guinea.

John Jackson, could you please clarify your last post? You say "very few anthropologists, and even fewer anthropologists who study the South Pacific, think much of [Freeman's] critique of Mead", then you say "those who know a lot about the specific topics he discusses think he got it right".

John, I don't think that's even remotely a hijacking. Mead et al would have been on a very different side of the issue of human universals than freeman.

What I find most interesting is the timing of everything. Freeman came out with his book not too long after Mead's death. Freeman died in 2001 and Trashing came out in 2009. This debate is going to go on forever if each side has to wait for the other side to die before publishing.

Priam, maybe getting away is just very very important!

Doug, Start here: http://tinyurl.com/4ekfm7u

moonkitty: Hasty composition and poor proofreading. How about, "FEW OF those who know a lot about the specific topics he discusses think he got it right". Apologies.

Greg: In fairness to Shankman: He and Freeman have plenty of exchanges in the journals so it isn't like Freeman didn't know about Shankman's critique.

For what it is worth, I think the early 20th century anthropologists agreed there were human universals, but that such universals did not play a role in cultural explanations. I think they just pragmatically cut them out in order to focus on cultural particulars. Freeman's claims (and Ev. Psychologists claims now) about them denying human universals are just wrong. There are human universals, they just aren't necessary when trying to explain cultural traits.

As to the Mead case, I see the principle reason for doubting her findings is the same logic we use on other questionable findings in science: the full body of work just does not support it. In a way, it doesn't even really matter if Freeman's book had come out or not.

I think the early 20th century anthropologists agreed there were human universals, but that such universals did not play a role in cultural explanations. I think they just pragmatically cut them out in order to focus on cultural particulars.

And to be fair, I more than once heard "cultural" defined (in a bioanthro dept) as "the stuff that doesn't matter" (or icing on the cake for a more poetic version)!

Let's say I'm a hunter-gatherer, down on his luck, nearly starving, and I come upon a stand of apple trees. I fill my pouch with apples and bite into one. A bear appears and threatens me and I take off running, eating apples even as I flee. I throw the apple cores over my shoulder as I go, and the bear leaves off chasing me to investigate them. I continue to run and soon encounter a group of hunters, hospitable sorts
who offer me protection and food. Do I get to say "No thanks, I already flate?"
Or, down South, 'I already flet."

A couple of points. First, I have also heard culture described as the "froth on the top".
Second, of course the best comparison for human universals is with things that are not shared with other primates. Otherwise they might be "primate universals" but the sorts of folk who write/wrote about human universals tend(ed) not to be in that game.
Third, the most obvious universal is language, and it is not shared with other primates. Language as a symbolic means of communication.
Fourth, language, because it is symbolic, permits the construction of stories about behaviour that are the reasons why Mead got confused. (I met Samoan students who simply laughed when they were required to read Mead at University in Auckland because it was well known that people had told her what she wanted to hear and not what they did not want to tell her).
Fifth, by the same token, I have always been sceptical of accounts of extreme sexuality or lack of sexuality in New Guinea, because I doubt the extent of participant observation of most anthropologists, and doubt the anthropologists even more if they have engaged in too much participant observation.
Sixth, in such accounts of New Guinea men avoiding sexual contact with women, what are the accounts of how women satisfy their sexuality? Or did these male anthropologists not participate in that bit?

What I find interesting is this: If human universals are important in structuring culture, then we may have a good sample of cultures with what we know about. If the constructivists are literally correct, we can not easily ever have a good sampling.

I love that scene from Bones.

I'm still working on my first cup of coffee of the morning so I might have misread you, but you seem to be using sex - the physical differences between males and females - and gender - the cultural values assigned to these differences - interchangeably.

What do you make of so called third genders, which are biologically male but occupy a unique gender role that is neither male nor female - such as the Hijra? (Presumably there are similar gender categories with women, but I haven't read of any).

As Arthur Conan Doyle said through Sherlock Holmes about predicting behaviour:

"One can say what a man in general will do, but one cannot say what a specific man will do."

Unfortunately, that's paraphrased and not directly quoted, nor do I remember which story it was from. Any takers?

I'm actually taking a class on Human Universals at the moment so I found this post quite interesting. We've even discussed Freeman vs. Mead in class!

The main thing I got out of that was that, basically, the core thesis of Coming of Age in Samoa depended on a bunch of lies told by adolescent girls to a biased researcher who barely knew the language over the course of nine months.

The Chambuli also come up every once in a while, primarily in a "the men were what might be considered to be 'womanish' at the time, but they'd essentially just lost the inter-tribal Superbowl and were moping around" sort of way.

It might just be the way it's presented in this course, but I kinda get the impression that Margaret Mead was really really good at seeing what she wanted to see.

P Smith, I have text files of the entire holmes canon but I've grepped to no avail. Though it sounds familiar.

Justaguy: Actually, I'm trying to make the point very strongly that something like "biological sex" and "culturally constructed gender" are not distinct. But I'm certainly not saying that they are the same (i.e., that terminology is interchangeable).

I've totally avoided specifics of sexual orientation as well as intersex questions, but not because these topics are not important or interesting. It would just be another 9,000 words!

"You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to."

It is actually Winwood Reade who said it, Holmes is paraphrasing. In "The Sign of the Four"

It is late for me here, so I am not sure I got all that on the first read, but I just wanted to say that this struck me as a very thorough and cogent introduction to a concept I had not been much exposed to. Thank you.

I particularly appreciate your point about determinism. I am a mol biol grad student and so I am constantly surrounded by genetic determinists who can't seem to digest the idea that A) behavior is not determined by solely by genes; but B) everything is still determined, as that is a necessary constituent of cause and effect.

Iain,

Fourth, language, because it is symbolic, permits the construction of stories about behaviour that are the reasons why Mead got confused.

Language is not symbolic. The anthropologist Dan Sperber wrote a book named "Rethinking Symbolism" back in 1974 that addresses this very issue. Symbolism is part of encyclopedic knowledge, and is not anything much like semantics. If it were related to any branch of linguistics, it would be pragmatics, which is part of the reason Sperber has ended up writing books about linguistics. Language quite fundamentally has no analogy elsewhere in human life. This sounds counter-intuitive, especially after the past century of scholars proclaiming "semiotics" and symbolic interpretation, but it is nonetheless the case. I recommend reading Sperber's work (not just the 1974 piece, but his more recent works), because it is always enlightening, scientific, and truthful.

Here's an example Sperber uses to show the difference between symbolism, which is about evocations and focalisations, and language, which is about semantic meaning.
Take the following statements:
1) The lion roared.
2) The lion emitted its characteristic cry.
3) The lion RRRRrrroaaarred!

Semantically, there's no difference between them. They mean the same thing. But there is a difference of evocation - a symbolic difference - between them. The emphasis on the RRRR in "roared" evokes the idea of the roar more than the simple word "roar" on its own, but the emphasis adds no actual meaning. Semantic meaning, that is.

Unfortunately, this kind of analysis caught on only in linguistics (in pragmatics, under Sperber himself in fact), and a lot of anthropologists still erroneously believe that all of society is meaningful (semantic) communication. I even saw a suggestion that "a culture" could in the future be mathematically modelled entirely with information theory. This is a mistaken notion.

Anyway, thanks Greg, this post was very good. It's very much how anthropologists should be thinking about universals.
I was always suspicious of the Donald Brown list, I'm afraid, simply because the categories aren't that useful analytically. The universals I'm interested in as explanatory devices are much more fundamental than "marriage" (which doesn't have a substantive definition, in any case). "Intention", or the ascribing of intention to objects, is absolutely universal, fundamental, and analytically vital. It is universals of the nature that are most important, and not superficial resemblances in some practices put rather arbitrarily into a single category.

If you look at Evans-Pritchard's work on Azande witchcraft, you can find innumerable societies that have very similar thoughts and identical logic, but with different assumptions. I know of plenty of people in eastern Indonesia who don't have any defined concept of "witches" but believe in the power of the ancestors in the same way and with the same logic as the Azande believing in witchcraft. It's the logic that is most important, and reflective of innate (and likely genetic) predispositions. In this case, it is the ascription of intention.

Thanks again.

It might just be the way it's presented in this course, but I kinda get the impression that Margaret Mead was really really good at seeing what she wanted to see.

Yes! Coming of Age is a controversial thing to discuss, and Freeman's claims are possibly debatable (not done much research on the topic, tbh), but Mead clearly lied in another of her works, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. Here's how.

In discussions of kinship, there are a bunch of typologies of the concept of descent, and one I find useful is Rodney Needham's system, based on logical possibilities rather than existing discoveries. He identified six types of logically possible types of descent that could apply to inheritance of group membership, rights, obligations, property, and so on:
1) Patrilineal M --> M
2) Matrilineal F --> F
3) Double unilineal (M --> M) + (F --> F)
4) Alternating (M --> F) // (F --> M)
5) Parallel (M --> M) // (F --> F)
6) Cognatic (M/F --> M/F)

The last one is more differentiated and varying types of cognatic descent can be found, but it's still a useful category. Patriliny and matriliny are pretty uncontroversial; the inheritance of property/group membership/rights &c through the male line or the female line is demonstrable worldwide. Double unilineal descent is controversial only because the definition is disputed, but it seems to be found in plenty of societies - notably by Daryll Forde among the Yako in Nigeria.

Parallel descent was controversial, having been apparently found in the Amazon in the 1930s by the adventurer, and one of Levi-Strauss' main sources, Curt Nimuendaju, born Curt Unckel, who claimed that parallel descent was used in Apinaye society to create exogamous descent groups. Later research showed that he was wrong, and that while parallel descent existed, it determined membership of a dancing/ritual group, a minor social role in comparison to lineage formation. Other than in the Amazon, it hasn't really been shown to exist.

But alternating descent appeared to exist in Mundugumor society. Margaret Mead, who never learned to speak Mundugumor and spent under a month in New Guinea with the tribe, wrote in Sex and Temperament that the Mundugumor had alternating descent. She described it vividly. They called the alternating descent groups "ropes" (as in, cord), according to Mead. She described rivalry over property, talked vividly and in detail about quarrels between husband and wife over the inheritance and passing on of property. She claimed that even weaponry passed from father to daughter and then from daughter to her son.

It was all entirely fictional. Her own fieldnotes showed that the Mundugumor had patrilineal descent groups, and later ethnographic studies of the Mundugumor revealed that the word for "rope" meant... "rope". And nothing more.

So she seems to have either lied or overstated her knowledge of the society. Neither she nor her then-husband, Reo Fortune, mastered the language, and the interviews were conducted in Neo-Melanesian. That was probably the source of her error. It had anthropologists stumped for about fifty years, up to the 1980s, and Mundugumor alternating descent found its way into Robin Fox's classic Kinship and Marriage, still one of the best introductions to kinship.

Anyway, sincere apologies for the spam - but when I see an anthropological topic being discussed, especially on scienceblogs, I have to jump in. It is, after all, quite rare.

Al, I think there may be more than one functional definition of "symbol" or "symbolic" involved here. And when you say "semiotic" what do you mean exactly? Are you distinguishing Pragmatics from Semiotics? Since I personally think Peirce's conception of signs and symbols is very insightful, I tend to think of Semiotics and Pragmatics as two convenient terms for what is more or less the same perspective or at least overlapping set of perspectives. I don't think Sperber eliminates the central role of "symbolic thinking" at all. There is a difference, though, between "symbols" and "symbolic process."

I wonder what Noble has to say about this? Or his co-author? :)

Al: Not defending Mead here, but I'm not sure a logical set of inheritance rules is relevant. Or at least not this one. What about shadow matrilines? What about the Twi system (Paternal all the time then maternal for one generation depending on condition). Where does avuncular fit in here? Is that subsumed under matrilineal, in which case, that category is probably doing too much work.

I second your endorsement of Fox.

Al, I think there may be more than one functional definition of "symbol" or "symbolic" involved here.

Yes indeed, and there's also the problem of the definition of 'meaning', which is more problematic than it appears. Symbols appear to have 'meanings', just not in the same way as words, exactly. The Star of David kind of 'means' Judaism, but then again, it kind of doesn't. It's certainly not replaceable by the word "Judaism" - it doesn't create the same effect. And then there are symbols - not words - that can be replaced by words, like the little indicators on an oven showing which knob turns on which hob. You could write 'FRONT LEFT' or 'BACK RIGHT' and they'd have the same meaning. And then there's the symbolic aspect of words - the distinction between a lion roaring and emitting its characteristic cry. It feels like there's a distinction there, a symbolic one.

I think Sperber would be sympathetic to Peirce. There's nothing in Peirce's work - or in Levi-Strauss', to be honest - that is objectionable to an analysis of abstract symbols as different from words. But symbols work more on a pragmatic basis, and words on a more objective, shared, semantic basis.

Sperber was, I think, reacting against Lacanians and post-structuralist types, at least to some extent. It's certainly not the be-all and end-all, and I don't doubt that archaeology can lead to insights about symbolism and possibly the evolution of language through this, but...

Sperber was, I think, reacting against Lacanians... Always a good thing. Damn Freudians in sheep's clothing. Or may be wolves' clothing.

Ah, I see your point, but it was the point you're raising about typologies of descent that caused Needham to create this typology in the first place. The point wasn't a typology of societies, but a typology of traits within societies. Anthros used to classify, as you know, entire societies as "patrilineal" and so forth, but this was, as Ed Leach put it, as useful as a "category of 'blue butterflies' for the classification of Lepidoptera". The purpose of the typology was to classify bits and pieces that were passed in one way or another. For instance, in our society, names are (in general!) passed patrilineally - that is, we're patronymic. But property is legitimately passed cognatically, as are rights and duties.

So it's about bits of societies, not the societies themselves, although the key 'type' of descent might best be the one that forms exogamous kin groups. Apinaye society had parallel descent, but not for its exogamous groups, which (I think, based on what I can remember from Peter Riviere) are cognatically arranged.

Also, on the topic of language and human evolution, I'm reminded of Steven Mithen's article on ethnobiology and the evolution of the human mind - I think it's 2006, in a special issue of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. I'll try to dig it out.

Greg, are you secretly Cecil Adams? Today's Straight Dope is about the color thing:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/449/could-early-man-only-see-t…

Then there are those ladies who *may* be able to see more colors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromat

Do humans have more physiological variation than other animals? If not, this seems to throw a wrench into using bones to determine species.

Where does avuncular fit in here? Is that subsumed under matrilineal, in which case, that category is probably doing too much work.

If you mean descent through the mother's brother, then it's a problem, and one of the reasons why I believe Needham's typology, and others like it, to be far from the end of research (Needham proposed it in Rethinking Kinship and Marriage, in the introduction - he's very sceptical of everything in there, including his own proposal). I've been dealing with the problem of descent group formation that has the capacity for membership through the mother's brother in Timor recently. The descent groups are ideologically patrilineal, and they've got asymmetric marriage alliances. If the wife-giving group is not satisfied by the payment of bridewealth by the wife-takers, then they get to keep the progeny and induct them into the wife-giving group. Sounds simple, but explaining it simply in cross-culturally valid (universal) terms is tough.

The same is true for the Yako - I mentioned them above. Forde's analysis shows that while the Yako had double unilineal descent, the patrilineages were considered more important and more prestigious, and work by the Nigerian government was making the matrilineages significantly less important by reducing the economic basis for their existence, so membership of a strong patrilineage became very important. So a lot of Yako were being adopted by their mother's brother into the mother's brother's patrilineage, despite the fact that they were already in the same matrilineage.

Goes to show, a simple typology doesn't go far in explaining everything. But it was useful in showing how limited human descent types are, and both alternating descent and the so-called Apinaye phenomenon are yet to be in evidence...

The sexual role depends on how you view the role definition.

Would you say that since it's generally the male who forces sexual intercourse where force is extant show that the male is dominant, or is that a rejected male would need to force sex on a woman show that it is the woman (who gets to choose mates) who is dominant?

Or the protection of the female offspring (breeding recovery limited by female numbers) and the allowed death of male offspring (because of competition reduction) showing female primacy (they're protected) or female submission (they are kept)?

Maybe the need to compartmentalise and categorise absent any actual validity in the demarcation is a human universal.

Keith, there are reasons that we might have less variation than other mammals (we have gone through genetic bottlenecks) and reasons for more (we have more norm of reaction owing to the diverse environments we live in, and we may be evolving in a way that increases diversity as an incidental effect). This doesn't really affect determining species, though.

Al: I agree, but actually anthros still do pretty much classify/type a whole society, if for no other reason than convenience. And that's OK as long as one understands the limitations of doing that. It is very convenient to pretend that cultures are a structured entities that can be characterized. We seem rather comfortable noting that patterns of descent are best reckoned from within societies yet we are also comfortable using culture labels (several examples in this thread) many of which have major exceptions.

True indeed, although exceptions to descent patterns are generally a product of the overly zealous classificatory impulse that you refer to. We all know, for instance, that the Chinese are patrilineal. That's common knowledge. It also happens to be nonsense. Classic examples, like Evans-Pritchard among the Nuer, who were considered to be 'patrilineal', also recognised cognatic kin, and even this was mitigated by ties through residence. These things are more complex then they seem.

There are a few things that I'd say for sure about descent:
1) It is real. That is to say, it's a real cross-cultural phenomenon that requires explanation rather than a figment of the anthropologist's mind that can be ignored (as seems to be the view in vogue en ce moment).
2) Parallel descent doesn't create exogamous groups, although explanations produced in light of Nimuendaju's work, before it was falsified, showed that it might be feasible.
3) Alternating descent probably isn't possible, although it would be interesting and revolutionary if it were discovered, which it hasn't been.

Other than that, there's plenty to say, but it's a bit more controversial. And then there's the cultural, symbolic notions of kinship - the Schneider stuff, which I'm hesitant to approach, but which can be quite useful. Fredrik Barth uses cultural, cosmological understanding as a key to variation in descent in Mountain Ok communities in New Guinea in Cosmologies in the Making.

But still, an interesting phenomenon, and one Margaret Mead didn't contribute to the understanding of through her essentially false report on the Mundugumor.

Well,thanks for the advert, Greg. Human evolution, language and mind is a bit out of date now, though the central core of the argument is still as strong as ever (which may not be saying very much). There is a chapter on ideas about symbols (which as I look at it is not necessarily where I would go now).
I have a simple question in response to the point about lions. Can you put into this set of utterances a parallel set of utterances indicating the range of meanings that chimpanzees express when they talk about lions (in the presence of or in the absence of lions)? Of course, I expect that your answer will be negative. Some pant hoots which will have little range of possible interpretations. I really do not know. But the point about language being symbolic is this. The very arbitrariness of the utterances creates the different possible meanings that are contained in the three exemplar statements. If you do not want to use the word symbol for that combination of arbitrariness and convention, then you are free to re-define the dictionary as you want. That would be arbitrary, but it would not be conventional. But we could presumably find a way of expressing your meanings in the new set of definitions you come up with. And that is not something that people have been able to do with chimpanzees. Indeed, when I was first introduced to the extraordinary abilities of Kanzi, my question was "Can Pan pun?". I still think that is one of the ways in which we might be able to judge whether an ape has not only found an environment in which language like utterances make sense, but also "got" what language is all about.
So, the problem for an archaeologist is how we identify the consequences of this thinking. The problem for an archaeologist thinking like this is how to persuade other anthropologists that the creativity that flows from this sort of utterance is fundamental to both the communication of many more complex ideas, and the difficulty of interpretation of what those ideas might be. That paradox seems to me to be at the heart of the dilemma of social or cultural anthropology.
Taking kinship, as the last few posts have, there is a wonderful comment in the postscript to the fieldwork edition of Hart and Pilling's book on the Tiwi about how Hart was sent out by Radcliffe Brown to work out the Tiwi kinship system. He achieved this after "a half-hour's discussion with a few Tiwi who happened to be in Darwin at the time." Darwin is the city closest to the Tiwi islands. But Hart's field experience showed that the practice of "kinship" on the ground was very different--an issue that was addressed famously by Les Hiatt (on mainland Australia) in ways which led to his challenge to Levi-Strauss at the "Man the Hunter" conference. One of the things at issue is how people represent their relationships with each other symbolically with sufficient flexibility to appear to be within the rules while straying from them. And you cannot do that without a symbol-based communication system in which meanings are not immutable.
Finally, as an aside, I was always puzzled by the "Witchcraft" literature. It seems to me that it demonstrates the point again about symbols and mutability. I have no doubt that there are similarities between African witchcraft as described by Evans-Pritchard or elsewhere in Africa and witchcraft as it is/was understood by English speaking people, particularly in England (as I suspect we can easily overestimate the extent of interaction between British and North American anthropological scholars before, say, 1970). So "Witchcraft" in the titles of these books does not necessarily mean the same as it does in books about Western England or Salem. You see that it what I meant about stories expressed symbolically.

Good point about witchcraft. I only use the word in reference to Central Africa because I have to by convention.

I don't think the existence of "aberrant" cultures like the New Guinea one you mention are in any more a challenge to the general idea of human universals than the fact of amputations is a challenge to the truth of the statement that "humans are bipedal".

Re gender: sex exists, and socially defined gender roles exist. But I think there are serious problems with the modern sociology concept of "culturally constructed gender" as an *identity* which is ontologically separate from biological sex; or at least with the application of that concept outside the modern West. (Rather like how our own concepts of sexual orientation as identity categories don't apply to, say, ancient Rome; or even very well to the Middle Ages.)

kepsito: I essentially agree with you, but I would add a couple of points. For one thing, yes, sex exists but there really aren't' simply two sexes. Mostly yes, but not entirely. Then, when we get to gender orientation, just as gender is not separate and independently constructed with no attention to sex, "sex" is in part non-binary and non-simple for the same reasons gender is (well, isn't).

By keeping gender separate from sex and making it entirely constructed we lose all power to understand either sex or gender.

Mmmm. In what way is sex non-binary?

In the biological sense ... sure there are things like Klinefelter's and Turner's syndrome; but I'd disagree they actually represent anything like 'extra' sexes; they mostly cause infertility with a few other health defects, but in the common use of language we need have no caveats in describing Turner's syndrome women as women and Klinefelter's men as men.

A better argument for a non-binary idea of biological sex is perhaps provided by certain hormonal disorders, but I think there's extreme problems in deriving generals or rules from such extreme outliers (which are often presented as more distinct than they really are by people with an ideological axe to grind). I think they fall into my "we can still say 'humans are bipedal'" argument above.

As for culturally: I'd agree that third-sex cultural categories exist; I'd disagree that they're anywhere near as common as often portrayed these days [a lot of ritual concepts seem to have been lumped by some into implying an *identity* aspect which they did not seem originally to possess], and they're quite possibly rare enough to fall under the same principle of 'essentially outliers, too rare to have much meaning'.

kepisto, needing or not needing caveats in the langauge is not related to the fact that xx, xy, xxy, xxxy, xyy, xxyy, CAH, AIS, 5-alpha reductase deficiency and a dozen other things that all occur in n/thousands of people produce results that defy the binary label. And those are the easy ones.

With respect to genender, people identify themselves, they identify their ideal partner, etc. and each of these identifications can relate to something that happens developmentally at, perhaps, a half dozen points or stages, some purely chemical, some social, most environment-gene interactive. This would result in only XY people in some n^m possible gender-oriented sorts of individuals, where n is probably two and M is probably between 4 and 8, and some of those options are what we would call physical (i.e measurable with a caliper or qualitatively describable via anatomy) externally but most are physical internally and observable only by slicing up brains.

Male/Female is a real and powerful binary, like sky vs. sea. But have you ever been on the surface of the sea during a hurricane, or have you ever really considered what fog is. And sky/sea is probably a more consistent binary than male/female.

Regarding third sex, if you review the argument I just made, there are 20 "sexes" (genders). Or 60. Or nine. Some number larger than three. What astonishes me is how culture manages to cram everybody into two or three "genders" much of the time.

I avoid the word "disorder."

Non XY with "normative" development is not uncommon. And we haven't even mentioned chimerism!

Take note: http://tinyurl.com/4payl7c regarding next Friday's radio show on this topic.

Regarding the comment:
"It is late for me here, so I am not sure I got all that on the first read, but I just wanted to say that this struck me as a very thorough and cogent introduction to a concept I had not been much exposed to. Thank you."

I echo that.
A lovely peice of science writing (and commenting too). I especially applaud including cleverly funny bits like 'the four F's' of (what is this again, 'Anthropology'?).

I think you meant to write "feeding" when you wrote "fleeding".

Damn. This is the third time I've flixed that.

I don't believe that there has ever been a single person that has opinioned against the existence of Human Universals. It's just that in some situations it is not meaningful to discuss them, because they are tautologies from that certain perspective of analysis. In other words, some people begin studying the amputees to begin with, and naturally they will not do much with a study that proves that most people are bipedal. A person that studies the development of certain concepts in Roman law in a certain period of the civilization will not do much with, say, de Waal's new study that claims to prove in a novel way that there is common ground in human and primate morality. Because it cannot explain why some concept of law was invented in a certain court during a certain period, for example.

Most of the time I see debate on Universals it has to do with this. Some people are very very interested in generalities of human life, while others are interested in the particularities of human life and culture.

Of course, yet another option, which is mostly only discussed in philosphy, is how and where the idea of universality was invented and to what extent has it been misued, or understood in other eras and so on.

Tuomas: Well said.

Could you tell me where you found the information about cultural differences in color names? I am currently working on a project that requires heavy research into color cognition, and I found this bit particularly interesting and would love to pursue it further. Appreciate it!

I would start with Human Universals by Donald Brown. There is a chapter on it there.

Why do women shop and men hunt?

gregladen — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 13:45:26 +0000

Why do women shop and men hunt?

Or, when the hunting season is closed, watch teh game (the guys), or when there are no sales, admire each other's shoes (the gals)?

This is, of course, a parody of the sociobiological, or in modern parlance, the "evolutionary psychology" argument linking behaviors that evolved in our species during the long slog known as The Pleistocene with today's behavior in the modern predator-free food-rich world. And, it is a very sound argument. If, by "sound" you mean "sounds good unless you listen really hard."

I list this argument among the falsehoods, but really, this is a category of argument with numerous little sub-arguments, and one about which I could write as many blog posts as I have fingers and toes, which means, at least twenty. (Apparently there was some pentaldactylsim in my ancestry, and I must admit that I'll never really know what they cut off when I was born, if anything.)

Before going into this discussion I think it is wise, if against my nature, to tell you what the outcome will be: There is not a good argument to be found in the realm of behavioral biology for why American Women shop while their husbands sit on the bench in the mall outside the women's fashion store fantasizing about a larger TV on which to watch the game. At the same time, there is a good argument to be made that men and women should have different hard wired behavioral proclivities, if there are any hard wired behavioral proclivities in our species. And, I'm afraid, the validity from an individual's perspective of the various arguments that men and women are genetically programmed to be different (in ways that make biological sense) is normally determined by the background and politics of the observer and not the science. I am trained in behavioral biology, I was taught by the leading sociobiologists, I've carried out research in this area, and I was even present, somewhat admiringly, at the very birth of Evolutionary Psychology, in Room 14A in the Peabody Museum at Harvard, in the 1980s. So, if anyone is going to be a supporter of evolutionary psychology, it's me.

But I'm not. Let me 'splain....

I want to first provide the argument from bottom up. Over the next few paragraphs I'll outline why evolving during the Pleistocene made us what we are today, and what some evolved features of our species may be. Later, I'll deconstruct the argument.

Organisms have genes that vary (the variants are called alleles). Sometimes a variant arises that, when interacting with the environment, confers a negative or positive effect. Those that confer a positive effect with respect to the process of passing on genes to future generations are over-represented (on average) in the next generation while those that confer a negative effect are under-represented. If the strength of this selection is sufficient and random effects do not overpower it, there may be a shift in allele frequencies over time.

That's evolution.

Some behaviors vary because of underlying genes. The pattern of foraging by fruit fly larva, for example, varies in a way that has been mapped directly to specific base pair differences between alleles for a gene. There are a handful of other gene-behavior links (a handful relative to the total amount of behavior out there to study) but in most cases, the link between the underlying genetics and the resulting behavior is not directly documented, but assumed. This is reasonable. The link between phenotypic variation and the underlying genetic variation is almost always assumed and hardly ever documented directly.

Humans are mammals and thus have internal fertilization, internal gestation, and lactation. Each of these three important features of mammalian reproduction means a striking difference between males and females in the risks and benefits of behavioral practices, and in the very nature of reproductive strategies. Consider the very act of mating. A single copulation may have consequences that are extraordinarily different between a female and a male. A pregnancy followed by nursing and so on is a huge investment for a female, but virtually zero investment for a male. Copulating with the "wrong" mate (i.e., one that is somehow genetically not the best choice) has almost zero consequences for a male, who can simply copulate with some other female. A bad choice in mate for a female, however, may blow a huge percentage of her total reproductive career.

(Pause: In the above paragraph, I was writing about mammals. Voles, for instance. Or aardvarks. You may have been putting humans in there as your mammal of choice, but since the vast majority of mammals are rodents or bats, that may have been a bad idea. Please consider re-reading the paragraph and placing a wild, non-domestic 'typical' mammal in there as the fill-in organism, just in case your assumption that I was talking specifically about you was influencing your thinking on this.)

It is not at all unreasonable to expect that any mammal, including humans, would evolve such that there are male-female differences in things like risk-taking behavior, mate-preference, child-care proclivities, etc.

In particular, and this is very important, humans are the result of evolution over two million years or so of the Pleistocene, during which time our ancestors lived in a social setting that is represented today by the likes of the Ju/'hoansi Bushmen of southern Africa, who were intensively studied during the 1960s in part to learn about what the lifeways of our ancestors may have been like.

Furthermore, it has been proposed that the behavioral tendencies of humans are often fairly specifically hard wired protocols. We have the ability to do certain things because our brains are really a set of many different organs, including a set of cognitive structures called "modules" which were shaped by natural selection over these millions of Pleistocene years, a time that was pretty much similar from generation to generation, among people living in Ju/'hoansi Bushman like groups in the tropics and subtropics of Africa.

These modules provide the ability to be very good at certain things. When these modules are tested or challenged in modern-day humans living in the West, we see that we are still good at doing some of the things that we did back in the Pleistocene but no longer need to do today, and we often show poor performance when it comes to modern, western, industrialized, non hunter-gatherer or non-Pleistocene problems or contexts. Just as our hand eye coordination evolved to facilitate the use of tools, our brainy bits evolved to detect certain kinds of cheaters but not others, have a taste for rare but not common nutrients, and so on. Most importantly relative to the current discussion, males have a module that facilitates promiscuous sexual behavior and females have a module (probably the female version of the same module, according to the theory) that makes them relatively prudish and careful about sexual relationships. Males have abilities to orient things in time and space in order to better shoot the antelope with the spear, while women have the ability to remember details of things in space in order to better find and select the proper plant foods. And so on. Thus, males show off, fight other males, and practice hunting by playing hockey, baseball, and football, or at least, watching the games and knowing every detail of the statistics, while females ... shop and stuff.

It's a nice theory and there have been a lot of studies supporting the basic idea as well as a number of specifics. However, there are some problems.

Let's start with the Pleistocene. The Pleistocene is, among recent geological time periods, considered to be the most variable in terms of climate change, and thus, overall ecology, habitat distributions, etc. There is no expectation that any given population making up part of a species like humans or their close relatives would have had any long term consistency in natural environment. Indeed, the post-Pleistocene life of the horticulturalist, buffering their food supply by growing crops, is probably more consistent over time than any period in the Pleistocene, with respect to basic ecology. Furthermore, when we look at foragers across Africa today, and at the archaeology which tells us something about their past, we see a huge amount of variation in habitats and adaptations to habitats. Humans have lived in very arid environments and very wet environments, coastal and inland, riverine and woodland, grassland and forest. Post-Pleistocene food producing human groups tended to avoid several of these habitats and have lived in a much narrower range of contexts.

One might argue (and this is the usual argument) that it is really the social setting in which humans lived, not the habitat, that was consistent over two million years, thus the Pleistocene as a variable time period argument goes out the window. But I should point something out about that counterargument: It wasn't ever made until people like me (mainly me, in fact) started arguing, mainly at conferences, that the Pleistocene varied too much to be thought of as a stable habitat in which certain behaviors would evolve and get "stuck." You see, part of the Pleistocene argument is that it was a long time compared to the subsequent Holocene (two million vs. 10,000 year) so we are essentially Pleistocene creatures. But when it was pointed out to evolutionary psychologists that the Pleistocene varied tremendously compared to the Holocene, the "oh, it's the social argument" was raised to salvage the idea.

But that doesn't work. We know that habitat determines social structure in humans, with technology as a major factor. Foragers vary a tremendous amount in their behaviors, depending in large part on the ecology in which they live. Forager group size, often considered to be an important intermediate variable between ecology and social structure, varies tremendously with habitat. There are even foragers with stratified societies and slavery, and there are foragers who live in such small isolated groups that they need special cultural conventions to get together now and then in order to socialize, find mates, and so on.

There is also variation in important social norms beyond that which can be explained easily by ecology. For instance, it is probably fairly rare for an Efe Pygmy woman's offspring to have been fathered by anyone other than that woman's husband at the time of birth (though with serial monogamy a woman may have different children fathered by different men). In contrast, the Ache and other foragers of the Amazon seem to pay little attention to who is the father of whom, and it is common for a woman to have children fathered by several different men other than her long-term husband. These are very, fundamentally, even dramatically different social systems, found in tropical rain forest foragers. Efe Pygmy men compared to Baka Pygme men spend dramatically different amounts of time caring for their own children. Add to these examples the diversity that must arise in groups living across a range of different habitats, and we pretty much have destroyed the argument of one social environment in which we evolved for two million years. If the basis of the modern evolutionary psychology argument is falsified, the rest of the argument may be ... well, weak at best.

When this argument ... that the social Pleistocene was a weak idea ... was proposed, the counter argument was this: Sure, the social environment changed, but there are still some basic things that are always the same: Predators and the need to mate being key.

Fine. So now, the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptiveness (EEA), which this thing ... this time period ... is called is "Predators and mating." How do we distinguish, then, between evolution in humans vs. evolution in mammals, or even tetrapods, or for that matter, organisms, in general?

We don't.

Then, consider the foragers used as exemplars in the studies done today in evolutionary psychology. A disturbing trend has emerged over the last five or ten years: The use of groups that are not foragers as though they were foragers. For some reason, it is very common today to see evolutionary psychologists claim that the homicide rate and level of violence among Pleistocene foragers was very high. There is, however no evidence whatsoever to support this. When we look at the evidence that is being adduced, we find that several groups of food growers, horticulturalists such as the Yanomamo of the Amazon, have somehow been included in the sample of "foragers." I can't decide if this is ignorance (the researchers have no clue what they are doing), intellectual dishonesty (the researchers need violent ancestor so they cook the data) or merely a tradition of indifference (the researchers use some data they got somewhere that someone else used, so they use it uncritically).

The Yanomamo and other groups like them do indeed have high rates of violence and homicide. It has been effectively argued that this violence arises because thy have horticulture. The thing that makes them different from foragers in terms of habitat and ecology also makes them different from other groups in terms of behavior.

Then there is the argument about the modules. Let's assume that the research that shows how modules seem to work and what they seem to "look like" functionally is good. The fact that humans are running around with modules today does not mean that these modules are genetically programmed. It is very possible that module-like structures in our neocortex arise during development, de novo, in each of us, and that these modules are similar across groups (but perhaps different sometimes by gender) because of overall similar developmental trajectories. The cases of modules failing, say, to detect cheating if the cheating is modern (non-Pleistocene, if you will) in context is unimpressive. In one famous study, people were shown to be very good at detecting cheaters when the cheater was someone possibly lying about their age to get a drink in a bar, but very poor at detecting cheaters when the cheater was a file folder in an esoteric filing system that may or may not have been filed correctly. In other words, when comparing actual social cheating to a glitch in a filing system, humans were pretty good at the social cheating part but not so good at the arbitrary artificial strange filings system. We are not impressed.

There are dozens of reported gender differences, with piles of research demonstrating them. But when we look more closely, we often see that the either a) the methodology of the research sucks or b) the gender difference, while likely real, changes, goes away, or even reverses as times change, suggesting that the difference is (was) cultural.

I'm sure there are gender differences. Part of the reason I think that is an inappropriate argument: I think there are gender differences in behavior because there must be. Such an argument is not evidential and does not lead us to a legitimate conclusion. Rather, it leads us to a set of valid hypotheses, if done right. However, I am utterly unconvinced that most gender differences are hard wired. There are probably some. Testosterone poising of neural tissue (indirectly) during development probably accounts for the fact that there are almost no male simultaneous translators. The neural ability to do this difficult thing is retains in some females but lost in almost all males during puberty. That is not genes coding for neural connections, but it is genes coding for different endocrine systems which then, through a series of negative and positive feedback systems, cause hormonally mediated changes in the body (including the brain).

Perhaps hormones make men like sports and women like shoes. But if so, it is not very consistent. My wife has three pairs of shoes and one purse. I have two pairs of shoes and four laptop bags. My brother-in-law knows more about sports than anyone in my wife's sports-oriented family. But his new wife knows twice as much as he does, even though no one in Andrew's family has quite admitted this out loud yet. I can track my own interest in both baseball and football as a function of a female mate or friend who had such an interest, with my involvement being a way to socialize and get along. I find sports interesting enough to pay attention and to enjoy it, but if I want to know what is going on, I have to ask the female I'm watching the sport with (often, but not always, my wife). Yes, I guess I'm following my true genetic nature: I'm somewhat promiscuous as to whom I watch the game with.

Sex differences are probably real and probably important, but they may not be hard wired as often as people think they are, or hard wired in the manner people think. We would expect a species like humans, born with this big blank brain and subjected to many extra years of learning as children, to develop these differences as a function of culture rather than genes. That, to me, is the most likely null model. I'm not sure I would attribute a priori much likelihood to a genes-up model of human behavior. How the heck would that work, anyway?

If you enjoyed this, or even, if it made you mad, you might want to check out these two posts:

This post is part of the Falsehoods II series, which are also explored on "Everything you know is sort of wrong" on Skeptically Speaking, with Desiree Schell.

And, please do feel free to tweet, digg, redit, stumble, etc. this post by using the buttons below!!!!

gregladen Tue, 10/12/2010 - 09:45

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Brain and Behavior

Thanks for this nice post.
I didn't know about the bit on simultaneous translation.

If there is not a differene between genetic men and women then why are there genes to start with?

You see the way children are shaped into (some kind of) man or woman by culture, but if so much of gender is cultural how is gender orientation so definitively not cultural but rather hard wired?

Is this going to be discussed on the radio show? If so, I'll make every effort to listen in! A little more than interesting.

This blog post could make Stephen Pinker's hair droop. Or is he not a fully formed evolutionary psychologist?

Certainly there must be effects of having all those different hormones, and the neural systems to support that, but I agree that the kind of detailed difference people attribute to genetic gender is crazy.

I just finished reading "Brain Storm" by Jordan Young. Very interesting and not far from what you are saying here.

Bah Humbug! Men hunt to impress the ladies and ladies shop to get away from the men, just like in the old days!

Caveman mike: I think I may have dated you in high school.

"Modularity" in a system composed of many interacting parts turns out to be a very hard thing to define, let alone measure. Even for something so idealized as a network of nodes connected with links, finding the optimal division of that network into modules is an NP-complete problem, and in general, it's not so clear whether that "optimum" you found is substantially better than other partitions which could look very different. Then you face the challenge that "modules" in the gene-interaction network of a developing organism do not necessarily map to functional modules in the spatiotemporal interactions of the grown brain. It's really a remarkably thorny problem.

Thank you.

I am physically female and am het, but I turn up male on most polls.

I hate shopping. I only own enough shoes to be legal & comfortable. I never wanted or had children.

So much of this crap is assumed to be genetic.

I have so many pairs of shoes! I have my summer hiking boots and my winter hiking boots (yak leather! Birthday present from my husband), and the most awesome pair of trail sandals... And then my trainers that I wear every day and another pair that I use for sports... And my bike shoes, and climbing shoes... Oh, and a black pair for when I have to be smart.

Donna, there may be a large difference between what gender one is reproductively and what cultural gender one acts as. The gender differences (shopping v sports etc) are very superficial, while producing sperm and eggs is not so much so.

Blake, just to be clear: The Evol Psych concept of a "module" is a functional complex that has a relatively well circumscribed structure and is not an emerging system of nodules nudged along by the developmental process. Like an arm: An arm does army things and is different from a leg. The speech center of the brain is located in a certain spot and does a certain set of things and is different from the cheating recognition module, each coded for by a fairly independent set of genes.

Don't be surprised to find evol psychs backing off from this position once they are confronted with the absurdity of it, but that's their position.

I always thought "honor killings" were a pretty big stumbling block to EP.

One of my beefs with Evolutionary Psychology is that will assume that any behavior (like the urge to go shopping) is a "trait" that has evolved in response to environmental pressures. Then they go looking for anything in ancestral humans' environment that could provide the push. In fact, behavior is some function of a combination of traits which actually HAVE evolved because of environmental pressures. This function is non-linear, and really tough to analyze.

To illustrate how silly this is, one might argue that a propensity to write blogs is a "trait", and go looking for reasons that it evolved as a response to evolutionary pressures. Obviously not, since blogging has been around for less than a generation.

Take Greg;s example of simultaneous translation. True, there are clear differences between men in women in the ability to do this, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the evolutionary fitness of having this ability.

To illustrate how silly this is, one might argue that a propensity to write blogs is a "trait", and go looking for reasons that it evolved as a response to evolutionary pressures. Obviously not, since blogging has been around for less than a generation.

Ah, but you see blogging is merely the modern expression of what men used to do in the wild. Which was hunt and have sex. That's why most blogging is about hunting and having sex.

"I was drunk, angry, stupid and blogging"

I have the shoe thing licked: I found one style of moccasins that are particularly comfortable. I wear them for everything, keep three pair in use -- dress, every day, and field use -- and order a couple of new pair when the oldest falls to pieces and my stock is low.

Some time back I got interested in hobby robotics which lead to artificial intelligence, which led to ..... so I'm reading your blog post and thinking "wow, this makes sense" but then I'm no expert on early evolutionary forces for human mammals.

What I like about your ideas is that they give credence to those males who are not overtly competitive or sports oriented in a way that does not required that they be feminine in nature. I certainly am not feminine, but have no interest in sports or shopping. I have privately theorized that what makes me good at the things I'm good at affects what activities I'd be interested in. In terms of Pleistocene eating habits, I'm more of an opportunistic scavenger, though I can raise crops and hunt... and yes shop and cook. I'm rather happy to just eat what is available. Likewise I am thus socially oriented, preferring neither best friends nor solitude. I'm happy with what is available at the time in terms of social interactions. Feeling that I'm different from most I meet, I have looked for something which 'as a theory' helps to explain how this is natural and not abnormal. For a theory of evolutionary psychology to be acceptable it must needs explain all the variation of human psychology today in an acceptable manner. Thus it is for artificial intelligence. There are many definitions, but none which explain all the variation of intelligence that we know of today. As physicists search for the theory of everything, so should each field of scientific endeavor search for the theory that adequately explains all variants and outliers without harsh criticism of those outliers.

I have been interested in finding a link between evolutionary psychological profiles to what we today call sociopaths. To myself sociopaths seem to be capable of over-riding some general brain functions to accomplish tasks which are difficult to others. This is important for artificial intelligence groups to understand. If you will, in an artificial intelligence, genetics and cultural pressures still exist, but as firmware, software, and data. Using this analogy sociopathic traits must then be programmed, but not hardwired... or are they? I've been looking for ideas that explain all these interrelated ideas, and just wanted to say thanks for your work and ideas. In my search for the perspective that makes sense of these problems your post has made much sense. We humans and mammals generally are wired for adaptive behaviors, while having some genetic traits hardwired. It is the adaptive abilities which matter most, leaving hardwiring functions to care for basic reproduction elements.

Reproduction can be assumed to be irrelevant for robotics and artificial intelligence but I think you have put the right perspective on behavior origins, or rather where they did not arise from and why. I personally think this gives deference to adaptive behaviors and that explains why I am normal though I fit none of the typical male or female behavior patterns we see in modern cultures. At least, I fit none of them well, but am normal on the far edge of the curve.

The trick is now to translate this understanding to thoughts on artificial intelligence.

Thanks

Brilliant article! I will pass it on!

Do you have any sources on the testosterone / translation thingy?

Yes. Yes.
I am female, love football, don't care much about shoes, love science, wear makeup sometimes, almost always have earrings on, didn't have kids, at one time was very promiscuous, now monogamous! WTF does this make me? It is culture that made me feel out of the loop, not genes. Read "Reviving Ophelia"--I raised my hand too much in class to be socially accepted. The more tolerance and acceptance there is for different behaviors, the more the true variability in human behavior is revealed. Acculturation is a STRONG trimmer of the bell curve.

There is not a good argument to be found in the realm of behavioral biology for why American Women shop while their husbands sit on the bench in the mall outside the women's fashion store fantasizing about a larger TV on which to watch the game.

Oh, I beg to differ: There definitely is. It just happens to be about enhanced group cohesion through adherence to (essentially arbitrary) cultural norms. ;)

I can't wait to hear the show this will be discussed on.

I was under the impression that Margaret Mead crashed the idea of gender roles and genes decades ago, and I always did wonder why we still have this fixation.

@Greg - Starting off with... "[support of evolutionary psychology] is normally determined by the background and politics of the observer and not the science."

then segueing into...

"I am trained in behavioral biology, I was taught by the leading sociobiologists, I've carried out research in this area, and [establish authority by association, yada yada] So, if anyone is going to be a supporter of evolutionary psychology, it's me."

...is a non sequitur. I'm not a scientist, but I know enough about marketing and logic to call shenanigans on this smoke screen. It doesn't at all follow that your training in the subject would implore you to be a supporter of EP. Backlash against one's training is so common that religious cults have their own savory word(s) for it (apostates, infidels, etc.). And hey, there's hay to be made in nearly any contrarian stance. I don't begrudge anyone for that, but setting yourself as the unbiased oracle of behavioral biology is going to make us skeptics hold you to the same standards to which you hold others. The "culture as science ~ science as culture" tagline tells us what we really need to know to accomplish this... Your coming at this with a nurture bias. And hey, that's fine. Social scientists have breathlessly clung to that bias since Darwin's second masterpiece, "The Descent of Man" threatened to do to the careers of social scientists what "Origin of Species" did to the careers of creationist clergy.

This is already getting longer than I intended, so I'll just try to argue one quick point. The root of your critique is the variable ecological pressures that would have been encountered during the Pleistocene. Fair enough. The problem I have with your subsequent arguments is that you discount the recent out-of-Africa event the current population was (not insignificantly) funneled through while ignoring that multiple strategies, therefore multiple alleles (and more importantly, groups of alleles) could/would have been successful and passed on. The DRD4 7R being a salient example which dates to that event.

Many of the outlier anecdotes in the comments make this same mistake. If evolutionary psychology does provide accurate insight, we wouldn't expect to find Homo homogeneous with the only variable being reproductive organs.

Since you attack EP in its entirety, and not any of the specific hypotheses which attempt to address explanations for shopping and sports, I found your arguments as unconvincing as you find those you critique.

I promise, this is totally coincidental, but I wrote a post yesterday hypothesizing a link between Deaner, Khera, & Platt's 2005 paper Monkeys pay per view: adaptive valuation of social images by rhesus macaques from Current biology and the stereotypical male sports fan. In brief, the low-status monkeys who pay to gaze at high-status monkeys demonstrate quite similar behavior to ardent fans (low-status) in relation to the players (high-status), and vise versa. Sure, I also dragged Andrews, Bhat, & Rosenblum's 1995 work on the willingness of macaques to forgo food to watch videos of other macaques, but hey... I went to art school. ;)

@Ellen - The methodology of the research with which Margaret Mead graced us frankly "sucks". This is amply documented, but many in the nurture camp have bestowed sainthood upon her and conveniently ignore this.

It doesn't at all follow that your training in the subject would implore you to be a supporter of EP.

You are absolutely correct. I stated it poorly. My expertise and experience leads me to NOT be a supporter in a way that I can document and demonstrate. I'm suggesting here that I may know what I'm talking about. More importantly, I'm suggesting here that not everyone in the field of behavioral biology is an evolutionary psychologist.

Calling what I said a smoke screen is inaccurate and a bit obnoxious.

You declaring that I have a bias does not make me have a bias. Rather, you are clearly "coming at this" with some preconceived notions and feel hurt that you were wrong, and thus you have started out a weak counter argument with an ad hominem remark followed by the accusation that whatever I say must be recalibrate to be more like what you say.

The rest of your comment strangely states that my post is wrong because I did not address the specific subject matter you were thinking I should address. That does not make a whole heck of a lot of sense.

EP modules would require thousands of alleles distributed among hundreds of genes. Name ten. Gene, protein or other product, neural structure shaped by the gene, details of how the neural structure differs, and a description of the neural structure's variation and the behavior's corresponding variation.

Twenty five years after the proposal of genetically coded modules with allelic variation across groups, in a world full of the equipment necessary to describe them, has not produced a result.

There is reason for that, other than the fact that they don't exist. I wonder if you know the lit. well enough to enlighten us on that?

Oh, by the way, everyone should go look at Andrew's site. I'd not seen it before. A wonderful parody!

(It is a parody, yes?)

Not bad for an art major, though. (Oh, and I'm not really a "social scientist" so much as I'm a "biological anthropologist" .... which can be hard to classify. Please don't imply that I'm a cultural anthropologist or sociologist. That would be getting yet another thing wrong.)

I doubt that it's valuable for us to debate whether my claim of your bias is any different from your charge that those in the other camp are merely beholden to politics and training. So... back to the topic...

The bit about you not really discussing what I "wanted" was in reference to your italicized assertion that there are no good arguments explaining shopping habits. You didn't mention a single argument specifically pertaining to this assertion. Arguments abound (Geoffrey Miller, Gad Saad, etc.), so you could have at least set up the weakest one as a straw man and knocked it down. How are we to know that you didn't just overlook the "good argument". Rather, you launched into a "deconstruction" of perceived flaws in the methodological foundations of evolutionary psychology as a monolith. Interesting approach, as I (not coincidentally) find Derrida's post-modernist insistence on a lack of referents to be a virtual mirror to the general discounting of the philosophy of evolved morality hypothesized by Darwin and elucidated others.

Nobody said evolutionary psychology and its ilk are easy. Yeah, everyone from the Pleistocene is dead. That makes it harder, not stillborn. Further, the genetic science required (and that you requested of me) is in its own infancy. Science on the former may improve marginally, but the latter will improve by orders of magnitude. After a few years of maturation I'll likely be able to oblige your request. You know there are no living Pleistocene chaps so it's easy to point out that this path is limited and declare the line of inquiry "wrong". You know that genetics is the limiting factor so it's easy to make that request, then suggest throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But, is that what an unbiased person would do? This simply isn't the solved science you make it out to be. And... what fun would it be if it was easy?

I'll just echo my unchallenged positive defense: If the predominant theory - placing all modern humans in the same lineage subsequent to a singular out of Africa event 40K-50K years ago - is true, then the variability of global Pleistocene ecology is drastically reduced as an important variable, and thus concentrates the adaptive pressure within the smaller range. If the predominant theory holds, you've dramatically overstated the ecological variability in the Pleistocene as a factor precluding further inquiry. No accounting for the evolved behavior of evolutionary dead ends is required. Even in that case, the dead ends may actually inform evolutionary psychology, rather than the contrary. Work on Neanderthals may illuminate strategies that don't work in certain ecological frameworks.

Further, evolutionary psychology isn't restricted to the 2.5ish million years of the Pleistocene as you imply. Just like all of the other sciences based on evolutionary biology, EP gets to synthesize from everything from fruit flies to primates. The game theory aspect of EP in particular has made predictions that have held up quite well in such instances.

Frankly, there is so much non-evolutionary-psychology specific work debunking the blank slate theory that it almost pains me to refrain from continuing.

I first heard the term "evolutionary psychology" 391 days ago. Rather than feeling hurt and wrong, I'm elated that I can read the arguments of someone who's been at it a couple decades longer, understand it, and perceive flaws.

And yes, I can do parody. Careful what you wish... :)

Andrew, your argument that the science just isn't there yet but we'll find it completely ignores (as most of these arguments about inherent differences do) the null hypothesis. We have a good preliminary understanding of the social forces shaping gender differences. We have nothing from the genetics camp, despite the fact that they have been trying.

The appropriate response to that is not "Wait for it, and prepare to be called arrogant if you argue the other side in the meantime." The appropriate response is "While it might change in the future if we get different results than we have to date, our current understanding is that these differences are created socially." That is what the evidence says, and that's what Greg has said, generally.

If the predominant theory - placing all modern humans in the same lineage subsequent to a singular out of Africa event 40K-50K years ago - is true, then the variability of global Pleistocene ecology is drastically reduced as an important variable, and thus concentrates the adaptive pressure within the smaller range.

That is true and very well stated, I think. Henry Harpending would disagree with you. This has little to do with the lack of a mechanism for genes coding for modules, and it does not speak to the criticism that the Ju/'hoansi bushmen ala Lee and DeVore of the Kalahari are the modal humans of the EEA.

The Kalahari humans are merely a backwater of migration and the assertions that those tribes being the origination of humanity is old inaccurate science and not currently held to be accurate.

The Bushmen tribes apparently represent an ancient migration out of East Africa towards Southern Africa and their relatively isolated and unmixed DNA has been preserved as a relic population. Although some studies years ago suggested that they held a lowest common denominator Y-chromosome(hypothesizing their place in the origin of humanity), this is no longer widely held. While they do represent a very old civilization, one of the oldest (along with the Ituri forest Efe pygmies), they cannot be held as the prototypical human civilization. They are merely adapted to their environment (which has been the area of Southern Africa for thousands of years), which is likely much different, however, than the original human environment of Ethiopia.

Recent DNA studies all map the lowest-common denominator DNA to the area around Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where there are no surviving relic populations (the original DNA having been admixed with successive waves of migration through Ethiopia).

I just want everyone to know, for the record, that the comment by perpsectoff is riddled with factual errors that I do not have time at this moment to repair. One might ask how one maps a "lowest common denominator" (a novel use of this term) to a place where there is no remaining evidence. And so on.

(I'll also quickly ad that the ESA-MSA transition in east and northeast africa is firmly dated to 250K, while the same transition in southern Africa looks more like 400K, so the "origin of modern humans" is not likely to be Ethiopia).

Stephanie, I agree with you. However, critics of evolutionary psychology too often use the reverse of your argument to dismiss the line of inquiry out of hand. Both tactics are equally unscientific.

The following quote is from a scientist with a blank slate lean, but offers a view that, to my mind, is more scientifically sustainable than Greg's criticisms afford:

"I have presented arguments for the conclusion that the SSSM is closer to the truth than EP... I do not suggest, [however], that EP is an intellectually bankrupt research program. It has already produced important and informative hypotheses concerning human behavior and history, and there is reason to expect it to continue to do so." (Levy 2004)

Since there was never any attempt above to directly support the stated hypothesis regarding shopping, I'll spare everyone from the research addressing it directly. To the actual argument being made, I've included a reference that touches on the histrionic question of evolutionary psychology as a bankrupt monolith (Confer et al. 2010). Additionally, I've included a reference that touches on the question of the political bias of evolutionary psychologists (Tybur et al. 2007).

Confer, Jaime C, Judith A Easton, Diana S Fleischman, Cari D Goetz, David M G Lewis, Carin Perilloux, and David M Buss. âEvolutionary psychology: Controversies, questions, prospects, and limitations.â The American psychologist 65, no. 2 (2010): 110-26.

Levy, Neil. âEvolutionary Psychology, Human Universals, and the Standard Social Science Model.â Biology and Philosophy 19, no. 3 (2004): 459-472.

Tybur, Joshua M, Geoffrey F Miller, and Steven W Gangestad. âTesting the Controversy: An Empirical Examination of Adaptationist Attitudes Toward Politics and Science.â Human Nature 18, no. 4 (October 2007): 313-328.

Andrew, what theory do you think Greg is putting forth? He's critiqued a number of specific lines of thought. I think you're reading in more than exists in the post.

This assertion is so grandiose that it's verging on impossible to read more into it than it implies...

"There is not a good argument to be found... I'm afraid, the validity from an individual's perspective of the various arguments that men and women are genetically programmed to be different... is normally determined.. not [by] the science."

Greg has critiqued a number of specific lines of thought, indeed. However, after critiquing them, he finishes with an unjustified and fantastic leap to...

"We would expect a species like humans, born with this big blank brain and subjected to many extra years of learning as children, to develop these differences as a function of culture rather than genes."

We would? No, "we" did. It's been tested and the results say otherwise. The specific lines of argument Greg makes simply do not bear out his far-reaching absolutist conclusion. Buyer beware anytime someone takes a binary position on the nature vs. nurture question. The "big blank brain" hypothesis is the fringe position in 2010. It was convincingly refuted by Steven Pinker (despite @Markella's quip that this trumps Pinker) in "The Blank Slate" (2002), a zillion other times, and I'd again refer everyone to (Confer et al. 2010 [full-text from author]) for a thorough overview, numerous clarifications, and empirical studies that render the "culture rather than genes" position absolutely untenable. It's completely on point as it answers the following questions:

1. Can evolutionary psychological hypotheses be empirically tested or falsified?

2. Donât people just solve problems using rationality?Wouldnât one domain-general rationality mechanism be more
parsimonious than postulating many domain-specific mechanisms?

3. Arenât human behaviors the result of learning and socialization, not evolution?

4. How does evolutionary psychology take culture into account?

5. How do recent novel environmental phenomena affect human evolutionary psychology?

6. What role do genes play in the framework of evolutionary psychology?

7. What is the practical value of evolutionary psychology?

8. What are the limitations of evolutionary psychology?

Judging by many of the comments preceding my first one, many would benefit from the more balanced treatment of evolutionary psychology found in the above paper. Bonus: it's about 379 pages shorter than Pinker's book.

Andrew, you are being an arm waving dick, and I'm not entirely sure why. You really have set up a straw man here, and when I've replied to you, you haven't listened or adjusted your argument one bit. I also wonder why you do that.

If you were actually aware of my position on the evolution of the human mind and of hominid behavior, you would likely find that we are closer to each other than you claim. (Though still, not too close, I'm sure, as I'm not a genetic determinist and you are). What you have done instead is read one of my posts, misunderstood it, and thrown numerous references out to refute what you claim incorrectly that I'm saying. And, you've done little more than sidestepping the real questions at hand, such as how can you be so certain that there are genetically coded behavioral modules that we are born with when none can be demonstrated to exist other than saying that the genetics is still in it infancy (which is an absurd thing to say)?

The references are great, I love it when people provide them and the actual PDF is a nice touch, I'm sure my readers will appreciate that. But you need to stay more focused and be less dogmatic.

Interestingly, when I wrote this post (and did the recording for tomorrows show) I very purposefully narrowed my discussion to focus on the EEA and one or two other topics. I suppose that perhaps I should have covered everything about everything.

Aside (not for Andrew) to other readers (Andrew, stop reading)....

What you are seeing here folks is the reaction of someone who has a very closely held view of how life works and who does not want to see that view challenged. The 'comebacks' are canned, the reaction predictable, and I promise you that if a real discussion were to start the side stepping and back pedaling would be frantic. Shades of Brian Pesta, as you may recall. ... will we have threats of law suits if I don't succumb to Andrew's demands as to what I say, and how I say it?

OK, back to you, Andrew: You still have not answered my question: Given the way evolutionary psychology is actually treated in the literature, by actual evol. psychs, don't you see a conflict between the concept that modules are coded for by genes that have a potential great range of allelic variation and the homogeneous nature of those modules? Can you tell us how evolutionary psychologists treat that problem?

Greg, First... Point of fact: There is a gaping expanse between genetic determinism and the position evolutionary psychologists take. "Evolutionary psychology forcefully rejects a genetic determinism stance and instead is organized around a crisply formulated interactionist framework that invokes the role of the environment at every step of the causal process." (Confer et al. 2010, page 11) Pejoratively using this label is a common "argument" made by blank slaters.

Now, Sir... You assumed a certain amount of work by laying down a foundational assertion that there are "no good arguments". Sorry, but if someone makes those claims, they should be expected to provide examples of the not good arguments. You simply didn't do that. Instead of arguing your manageably narrow hypothesis, you argued broadly against evolutionary psychology as a monolith. You then concluded it's "culture rather than genes", which is wholly reliant upon an assumption of a "big blank brain".

As to your blank slate conclusion, Yes... I'm afraid you do have to just about "cover everything about everything" to make that case. You assumed the burden of proof by making the claim.

What's bracketed between your hypothesis and conclusion is interesting and debatable, but even if you were right on every point, your conclusion still wouldn't follow without piles more support. Why is it put to me debate them point by point within the context of a standard they can't hope to achieve? Simply put, if your hypothesis and conclusion were tighter, or if the 4th and last paragraphs had been omitted, this conversation would have gone completely differently.

So... I've simply been arguing against your hypothesis and conclusion while you've been expecting me to debate the disconnected middle. How that's nefarious is a mystery. Yet... I continue to be told you didn't make the claims I've been copying and pasting from your post. And now that makes me a dick who's going to side-step, back-pedal and sue people? I guess you could amend your original hypothesis and conclusion to something more fitting and test this new Brian Pesta hypothesis. I mean... unless the name calling and imaginative character speculation is your idea of a coup de grÃ¢ce.

Andrew, I take it back. There are good arguments, which I happen to not be terribly impressed by myself.

I am not a blank slatist.

I did not present a hypothesis and conclusion, though you seem to have produced one from my post. That's rather more your problem to deal with than mine.

You would have a more productive time arguing with people over interesting issues like this if you did not show up at the table both offensive and defensive the same time.

Mr Z -

I just wanted to point out that sociopaths aren't overcoming something in their brains, that something is simply missing. That is, to be clear, unlikely an absolute. Sociopathy is a discrete set of traits, given an arbitrary definition, so there is an extremely high likelihood that there are actually many possible causes of a given individual having those traits. But underlying those is generally a lack of something,* rather than overcoming something. Neuroplasticity, combined with any number of environmental conditions can foster the loss far more easily than someone being born that way.

To be clear, this is the best understanding we currently have, based on the best evidence we currently have. I would also like to note that in aggregate, most sociopaths aren't crazed murdering maniacs. They merely lack what is commonly known as a conscience and tend towards nearly pathological narcissism. But while they don't have a clear sense of right and wrong, they are capable of discerning right and wrong in their cultural/social context. Being mostly concerned for their own wellbeing, they tend to keep themselves within those bounds.

Andrew @ 34 -

The arguments made in that article are commonsensical, as are most such arguments I have seen. They take what are very reasonable assumptions and try to imbue them with the veneer of science. This is the thing that really irritates me about evopsych - the notion that we can make rather broadbased assumptions about the evolution of human behaviour over the past two hundred thousand years (though I would argue we shouldn't start with homo sapien), based on the behaviour of humans today. I'm sorry, but no matter how you want to slice it, claims made by evopsych simply aren't falsifiable.

That doesn't mean it can't be valuable. The more I continue with my education and explore my interests, the more I am inexorably nudged towards evolutionary psychopathology. I'm pursuing degrees in neuropsych and linguistics, with the intention of researching addiction and the various contributors to addiction across cultures. In short, I am going into evopsych and very excited to do so.

But I don't harbour the illusions that a lot of evopsychologists seem to hold dear, about the nature of that research. Even assuming that we keep up the current pace of increasing our understanding of neurobiology and genetics, it is unlikely we will ever clearly delineate genetics versus environment. Unless and until we are able to do so, all we have is supposition. Much of that supposition may be well educated and even foster useful results (evospychopathology has), but at this point it cannot be anything but supposition.

The biggest problem I have with a lot of evopsych claims though, is that they can be just as reasonably explained by neuroplasticity and the environment. Take the example the Psychology Today mentioned, the one about survival words. It is just as likely that survival words are so important because they denote critically important ideas. While it is easy to sit here and assume that they could only carry that importance due to evolution, it is just as easy to say that base needs conditioned by the generational transmission of culture. That they are important ideas that are firmly embedded in childhood and which subsequently become hardwired.

I'm not claiming that either is correct or incorrect, I am merely trying to point out that both assumptions have equal or nearly equal validity, given the evidence we currently have to work with. I do tend to assume rather more from the environment, because of how profoundly environment can and does shape our brain - before we're even born. That doesn't mean that I am a "blank slater" any more than Greg's position implies that he is. Frankly, it's inconceivable to me that genetics doesn't play a role or even that evolutionary traits don't.

But making the sweeping claims that many evolutionary psychologists like to make is completely unjustified.

* There are exceptions to this, but they are rare and arguably not manifestations of sociopathy. I would argue they are, because such people fit the definition. Anyhow - it is possible to torture/condition a person to exhibit all the characteristics of sociopathy, only to have said shaping completely break down. It is also extremely rare.

DuWayne -

"...claims made by evopsych simply aren't falsifiable."

Based on the rest of your comment, it appears you read the article. Since it provides multiple references and brief analyses of specific hypotheses which were put forth by evolutionary psychologists, and were subsequently falsified, your claim seems to be falsifiable as well.

In your biggest problem with EP, you make an assumptions that is similar to a point in Greg's OP. Namely, an insistence upon a requisite reliance upon unknowable behaviors of our EEA/Pleistocene ancestors. Yet, in the next sentence, you use an example that is not reliant upon a video record of our ancestors to make a useful hypothesis which can be tested. The study used evolutionary theory to hypothesize about, then measured whether a memory bias exists in humans relating to survival-domain-specific words. Unless natural selection is falsified, we can reliably assume a general and powerful survival bias in the behavior of any and every species. Thus, we can test the hypothesis in any species that has both memory and language. If we assume (I think fairly) that all species with language must have memory, we can test the hypothesis in any species with language.

"It is just as likely that survival words are so important because they denote critically important ideas."

It's possible, but in light of the study, not "just as likely". Nairne & Pandeirada (the study referenced therein) controls for this by the "updated" Battig and Montigue norms. The reliability of this methodology can be challenged and it's certainly possible that other studies could be conceived to more accurately control for domain-specificity. In any case, your alternative explanation is testable; the authors invited further study. As such, this example too refutes a blanket claim of EP's unfalsifiability.

Greg -

Arguing issues without a bias to offense and/or defense is, by definition, not argument. Though I do understand your point that the psychology of the participants influences the discourse. I operate under the assumption that scientists are biased to relish challenge and appreciate candor. I think of it as an error management theory (EMT) compatible heuristic to save time in a world of a billion bloggers, and apparently some call it being a dick. But hey, EMT predicts that cost in some cases, so I'll probably be okay with it.

My mountain bike and the dwindling number of sunny fall days momentarily require my attention elsewhere.

@DuWayne (and anyone that wants to comment)

sociopaths are not just high functioning humans, they excel at many important occupations in this world. The 'something' you say is missing has not yet been identified and could simply be an under production or over production of some protein or chemical mixture. It's still quite important in my book as sociopaths stand out as that not quite human example of how we can all be at a given time. We see this difference played out in dramatic movies and such. Self preservation over cooperative behaviors is important to understand. I think (IMO) self preservation is primal while cooperative behavior is an addition to that.

If you like, it's what makes us what we commonly call human rather than animal, or rather part of. Whether it is genetic, chemically based, or some other mechanism, it's more prevalent than anyone likes to admit so is part of the wide spectrum of human experience. For me, it is important because it represents the human intelligence sans need for cooperative behaviors which include personal risk... if that makes sense. I think it fits the profile of hunter gatherer in my mind, rather than the farmer.

Well, just my thinking

Andrew -

The study used evolutionary theory to hypothesize about, then measured whether a memory bias exists in humans relating to survival-domain-specific words.

Which is all fine and dandy, except that there are equally likely reasons for that memory bias that don't involve evolution. All that is falsifiable here is whether or not that memory bias exists. The notion that evolution is responsible is not - at least not with the tools we currently have at our disposal.

We can continue to study this, but doing so would require looking for this phenom in other social structures and cultural contexts. Does this phenom exist in more egalitarian, inherently cooperative social structures? Does it happen and as strongly in high context cultures? Would we see it in functional welfare states, such as the UK?

Mind you, even then we are still looking at a phenom that cannot be incontrovertibly explained by evolution. The same alternatives that exist in Western, low context, low socialist social structures, also exist across cultures.

Unless natural selection is falsified, we can reliably assume a general and powerful survival bias in the behavior of any and every species.

Evolutionary biology isn't that simple. There have been a lot of animals that existed and survived for a time, some for very long periods, merely by accident. The perfect set of environmental variables existed, wherein they could thrive. A very good modern example of this would be Lemurs, which still thrive and in great variety. Put them into any number of other environments and it is unlikely they would survive, precisely because they don't have a strong enough survival instinct.

Thus, we can test the hypothesis in any species that has both memory and language.

And many behavioural experiments have been done that would indicate that survival memory can be easily overcome in a variety of species. These are imperfect experiments, because we don't have the common language to communicate abstract ideas with any other species. But a number of behavioural studies have indicated that survival memory can be easily supplanted for other variables.

It's possible, but in light of the study, not "just as likely". Nairne & Pandeirada (the study referenced therein) controls for this by the "updated" Battig and Montigue norms.

Umm...You do realize that while useful, the updated B&M norms are reliable only for a specific cultural context and social structure, do you not? As such, they are virtually useless as a control, in the context of evopsych research. They only take into account the cultural context and social structure of the United States.

In any case, your alternative explanation is testable; the authors invited further study. As such, this example too refutes a blanket claim of EP's unfalsifiability.

No more so than the assumption that evolution made it happen. We can test for this phenom under conditions that might indicate that it is an environmental variable, rather than a evolutionary one, but we would be left with the same uncertainty. While we may be able to sort this out with more certainty in the future (I am actually fairly confident we will - neurobiology and genetics are fields that are producing breakthroughs at a fairly rapid clip), the tools just don't currently exist.

The problem I have with your statements is the problem I have with a great deal of evopsych - it makes assumptions about phenom that can just as easily and with just as much likelihood be explained through shaping and the environment. The changes that happen to contextual memory over time and on a neurobiological level would indicate that environment has a profound effect on our most basic levels of thought. Merely learning a new language can cause significant changes in our abstract reasoning.

Given our understanding of how our brains adjust based on our environment, it is entirely reasonable to assume that the phenom evo psych attributes to evolution is caused by environmental factors.

Mr Z -

First:
I think it fits the profile of hunter gatherer in my mind, rather than the farmer.

Indeed and only the profile of the hunter/gatherer in your mind. Actual hunter gatherers are almost entirely in polar opposition to what you are describing. Hunter/gatherer social structures are very nearly entirely cooperative. It's the only way one can survive in a nearly perfectly egalitarian social structure.

Ironically, it is the farmer who can actually afford to start acting with "selfish" self interest. Urban structure offers some complications to this schema, but not really. While all of us depend on others, any of us could logistically cut ourselves out of the cooperative loop of social function. There are a hell of a lot of millionaires and billionaires who do just that - not to mention lower income level trust funders.

As for your notions of self-preservation and cooperation, you really fail to understand the functions of both and assume there is some utility to putting them at odds. Let me assure you that cooperation is far more primal than self-preservation at odds with cooperation. Let me further assure you that these are not mutually exclusive and in point of fact, are critically important as complimentary phenomena.

Our protohuman ancestors lived in cooperative groups, much like many successful species do today. It was only by living in such groups that such strange creatures as ourselves could survive. Individually we are (in terms of naked animals) really rather weak and indefensible. It is only in groups that we can thrive - whether we're talking modern humans or our protohuman ancestors.

I am quite curious how you think that putting self-preservation at odds with cooperation provides an advantage. I am very curious why you believe a society made up entirely of such people could survive. Eliminating cooperative behaviours that entail risk means that we have no police, no fire control, no interest in rescuing anyone from dangerous situations - including children, our own or otherwise. This also means no one willing to group up to fight off invaders. Presumably this would also mean no engaging in any profession that creates some factor of significant personal risk - which means no new construction, no mining and a serious curtailment, if not the complete breakdown of manufacturing.

Not all sociopaths are evil, most aren't. But most also understand that following a given set of social norms (to some degree) is in their best self-interest.

Oi - and:
The 'something' you say is missing has not yet been identified and could simply be an under production or over production of some protein or chemical mixture.

Whatever causes the lack, it is most certainly a lack and we know in general terms what is missing. The whole of our thought processes, including emotions, are made up of neural pathways. While we don't understand all that much about the brain, in relative terms, we do understand where many specific connections are probably made. We also have a pretty good idea that some pattern for morality is very likely universal and we know what region of the brain is active when we are forced to make moral/ethical/values judgements. For most sociopaths, that region stays dark when they are forced to consider such judgements.

I am not saying that it is perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. There is all too much we really don't understand about it. But I can say with an extremely high degree of certainty that socipathy is a lack of certain neural pathways that seem to be otherwise universal to humans.

Please keep in mind that I'm not making a values judgement here. I am not saying this is an inherently bad thing.

A comment worthy of expansion (someday soon?) into a post but I'll make here: Evol. Psych is an educationists program. That would kill it for some people, but not for me. I'm an adaptationist, accepting Pagel's Wager. But consider this: What are all those VERY COSTLY adaptations for that relate to human growth and development ... extreme (for a primate) altriciality, an extra five years of required high level parental investment, delayed post natal brain development, etc. etc. ... if not for maintaining a highly local-adaptive complex behavioral system?

We already knew this existed in primates, and we know that apes without ape culture are not behavioral apes (most people have never seen the apes they WON'T show you at the zoo, but it is quite astonishing). Humans are "more so" in this regard.

Bottom line (my hypothesis, not a firm conclusion): Human behavioral systems (modules) should be selected to be less specified, not more specified, by genetically canalized developmental processes, to the extent that they should be NOT built in, but rather, very reconstructible/reniventable on an individual case by case basis. That is my model for the Darwinian mind.

Greg, there are some serious logical flaws in your argument arising from a mixing of the arithmetic with the boolean. For example, you present your basic thesis as:

There is not a good argument to be found in the realm of behavioral biology for why American Women shop while their husbands sit on the bench in the mall outside the women's fashion store fantasizing about a larger TV on which to watch the game.

Just what do you mean by "good"? Likely to be correct? Highly likely to be correct? Absolutely, totally correct? You start with this fuzzy notion of correctness and then leap to the conclusion that, because is not a "good" argument, all such arguments are flat-out wrong. While your basic argument has many solid points, your conclusion is logically flawed. Your evidence demonstrates that some conclusions regarding the role of genetic factors in behavior are weak; your evidence does not contradict the basic notion that genetic factors exert influences on human behavior.

You repeat the basic mistake in your discussion of Pleistocene environmental variability. You correctly observe that there was some variability in Pleistocene environments. But again, you fail to recognize that variability is an arithmetic concept, not a boolean one. For any two Pleistocene environments A and B, there were some similarities and some differences. But you conclude that, because there were some differences, there could not possibly be any selective pressures on the human genome. That's an invalidly boolean conclusion from non-boolean evidence.

Here's a third example of the mistake you're making: your use of anecdotal evidence (your relatives who demonstrate behaviors contrary to predictions that one might make from genetic factors). Such evidence serves to refute boolean statements regarding the role of genetic factors in human behavior. It does not in the slightest refute arithmetic statements regarding the role of genetic factors in human behavior. The statement that "all men are promiscuous" is a boolean statement easily refuted. But the statement "men tend to be more promiscuous than women" is an arithmetic statement that can be supported or undermined only by statistical evidence.

My core point here concerns a common error I observe in a great many arguments: the confusion between the arithmetic and the boolean. Some truths are boolean: black-or-white, yes-or-no, one-or-zero. Other truths are arithmetic: matters of degree, likelihood, or intensity. If you want to draw boolean conclusions, you need boolean evidence and reasoning. If you have arithmetic evidence, then you can only draw arithmetic conclusions, not boolean ones. That's the mistake you're making here: drawing boolean conclusions from arithmetic evidence. The evidence we have regarding genetic factors in human behavior is arithmetic; the conclusions we can draw from this evidence are arithmetic in nature. The very notion of "genetic determinism" is a boolean absurdity; "genetic influence" is a more appropriate term. The evidence of genetic influence on a great many human behaviors is overwhelming. The range and degree of such influences is subject to debate, but the existence of such influences has been common knowledge for millennia.

Chris Crawford -

The evidence of genetic influence on a great many human behaviors is overwhelming. The range and degree of such influences is subject to debate, but the existence of such influences has been common knowledge for millennia.

I find it terribly amusing that you go through such great lengths to explain to Greg how he is wrong (and mistaking the Greg in your head for the one who wrote this post). You tear into the logic of his argument with claims that he is making factual claims (which he is not. He did not, for example, claim that the Pleistocene had no effect on the human genome), that he is inappropriately using anecdote for evidence (actually that appeared to be an illustration to me) then take him to task for making a boolean claim (when he did not in fact claim that there were no evolutionary pressures on our behaviors).

Then you turn around and make a commonsensical claim that isn't even remotely accurate. You use a vague metric (the sort you damn Greg for) with your claim that genetic influences have been "common" knowledge for millennia, when such influences haven't been common knowledge in any meaningful sense of the word for more than a hundred years, I would argue considerably less. Even as rather uncommon knowledge, such influences weren't really seriously considered until about two hundred fifty years ago and then the assumption was traits were passed on directly from the parents (i.e. characteristics developed in their lifetime). At that, there is little evidence that behaviour was taken into consideration even then.

You might argue that early naturalistic history might have made this assumption, but that is a weak argument indeed and again, was very uncommon knowledge even in it's time and certainly through the centuries. Only a fraction of the elites throughout history would have read works that discussed naturalistic philosophy and no small number of them would have thought much of it absurd.

Finally, even when we come to a time when the assumption that behaviour might be heritable to some degree, it was the subject of heated debate - even among so called scientists. Unfortunately it is still something of a debate (in much the same way "design" versus evolution is a debate) even today, though few scientists actually take it seriously.

So after all that erroneous ranting about Greg's "mistakes," you then make a fallacious statement using a unbelievably vague metric and actually engage in the very worst you accuse Greg of doing.

Good job Bob...

DuWayne, you assert that Greg is making no factual claims. If so, then what kind of claims is he making: fantasy claims? Is he merely making random statements with no claim that they have any truth in them? As I read his post, he seems to be making some very strong assertions.

You take me to task for claiming that "the existence of such influences has been common knowledge for millennia." You deny that such common knowledge has existed for millennia. Perhaps you have forgotten the fact that poets and writers have been commenting on something called "human nature" for a long time. They don't refer to it as "human nurture", they call it "human nature". We see comments about fundamental human behavioral proclivities in Homer, Gilgamesh, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Bible, the Koran, Confucius, the Vedas, Boethius, Shakespeare, Erasmus -- it's quite a long list. The belief in genetically conferred behavioral traits underlies all notions of aristocracy and hereditary monarchy. In many cases, of course, such beliefs were incorrect, but the belief in human nature is simply too deeply imbedded in human knowledge to be denied.

But you knew that.

Well Chris, you're welcome to point out where Greg is making factual claims, all I see is someone doing exactly what you accused him of not doing.

As for the rest, forgive me for assuming that this discussion about specific individual, inherited behaviours was about specific individual, inherited behaviours, rather than very generalised and non-specific societal behaviours. Also forgive me for assuming we were actually talking science, rather than commonsensical bullshit. That same common knowledge you are describing also assumed that the earth is flat and that most natural phenomena were the purview of the gods or ancestors.

In the context this conversation is taking place, behaviour and heritability have very specific meanings. The commonsensical understanding you are describing has absolutely nothing to do with those definitions.

But then, you probably knew that too.

all I see is someone doing exactly what you accused him of not doing.<.i>

Your language here is confused. Is "someone" a person other than those referred to as "you" or "him"? Please clarify your statement.

forgive me for assuming that this discussion about specific individual, inherited behaviours was about specific individual, inherited behaviours

Actually, neither you nor Greg have discussed at length any specific individual inherited behaviors. There have been vague and oblique references to male promiscuity, hunting, gathering, shopping, and sports, but none of these have been analyzed specifically. This has been a very high-level theoretical discussion. I think it would be improved if we discussed some specifics, so I'll start off with what should be an easy one: would you agree (as Greg apparently does) that the relatively greater degree of male promiscuity is an inherited trait?

Also forgive me for assuming we were actually talking science, rather than commonsensical bullshit.
Ah yes, the young scientist's dismissal of the arts and humanities as bullshit. This is a common trait but one that usually evaporates with continuing education. I felt much the same way when I was young -- it was just a matter of ignorance. Suffice it to say that your low opinion of the arts and humanities is not shared by mature scientists. While it's true that the knowledge accumulated in the arts and humanities is of a different nature than the knowledge accumulated by the sciences -- it lacks rigor and strict consistency -- that knowledge nevertheless commands the respect of more broadly educated people. Shakespeare didn't have a shred of scientific evidence to support his claim that "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" -- but his assertion nevertheless comports well with what we have learned by rigorous methods. You can reject it or you can learn from it.

I only have a moment, so I will clarify two things quick.

First, "someone" = you.

Second, I do not have the least bit of scorn for the humanities you patronising shit, where would you get the idea that I do? I'm more writer/poet/musician than I am scientist, the scientist bit being a very recent addition to my life and my only being an undergrad at that.

There is however, a significant difference between commonsensical, bullshit definitions and operational definitions. Behaviour and heritability, in the context of what is being discussed here, have specific definitions that are not interchangeable with the vagaries of artistic license. That doesn't make the humanities useless, even in the context of science. It does however, make it less than useful in the context of a discussion about specific science.

you patronising shit
It would seem that your behavior refutes your argument. After all, if you have not inherited the aggressive emotional constitution of Pleistocene males, why in the world you inject such strong emotion into a purely intellectual discussion? ;-)

I'm more writer/poet/musician than I am scientist, the scientist bit being a very recent addition to my life and my only being an undergrad at that.

I am honestly surprised that a self-declared writer/poet would characterize the works of Homer, Gilgamesh, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Bible, the Koran, Confucius, the Vedas, Boethius, Shakespeare, and Erasmus" as "bullshit". You must be a very good writer indeed to be able to look down on these people! ;-)

Behaviour and heritability, in the context of what is being discussed here, have specific definitions that are not interchangeable with the vagaries of artistic license.

Really? The human behavior that artists address is beyond the ken of science or has no connection with the issues discussed here? I suspect that you're struggling to articulate a reasonable point, but botching the effort. Let me try to make your point for you: you seem to be trying to say that evidence from the arts and humanities cannot be applied to scientific research into specific human behaviors. For example, Shakespeare's "Hell hath no fury" quote has zero evidentiary value in analyzing the behavioral response of human females to male rejection. I agree with this assessment. However, this true statement is inappropriate as a rejoinder to the point I made, which is that the existence of human nature -- a set of behaviors so immune to cultural variation as to be most likely due to "nature" rather than "nurture" -- has been acknowledged for millennia. To state my point more briefly: human nature really does exist, and people have known that for millennia. As I pointed out in my original statement, the range and magnitude of human nature is subject to debate, but its existence is beyond denial.

Does that sort things out for you?

Greg #42, your hypothesis is exactly right.

Quite interesting that you said it in #42.

Sailor, I think that honor killing could be the maladaptive extreme of an adaptive trait, that of violence against women while they are pregnant. (not that that excuses it, it doesn't)

A leading cause of female death is death during childbirth due to cephalopelvic disproportion. In the absence of medical C-section that is about 1% per pregnancy. Beating the crap out of your mate while she is pregnant does cause a smaller fetus and might save her life (women who are victims of domestic violence while pregnant do give birth to smaller infants (meta analysis, 95% CI = 1.1- 1.8 ). The risk of cephalopelvic disproportion is largest for a first pregnancy and declines with each one.

Saving a woman's life by preventing her death due to cephalopelvic disproportion also saves the lives of her as yet unborn children. We might expect violence against women to be more severe when by her relatives who share genes with all her offspring than by her current mate who is only the father of the fetus she is currently carrying. Honor killings are usually by a woman's male relatives, either her father or male siblings.

It turns out that the MAO A1 gene is on the X chromosome and has been associated with violent behaviors. A woman has her father's X chromosome, and has a 50% chance of sharing one with each of her male siblings.

Violence against females while pregnant also epigenetically programs the fetus to have a different phenotype. Behavioral differences can be measured in experimental animals due to exposure to stress in utero. In humans there is what is called the âcycle of violenceâ. If your fetus is going to be born into a violent world, better to epigenetically program him/her to be violent first.

There are some other things that seem to fit violence against women being a âfeatureâ. I have looked in the literature for any other examples of males being violent toward a female while that female is pregnant with that male's fetus and could not find any. However, humans are unique in having a high incidence of death in childbirth and cephalopelvic disproportion due to the gigantic brain that infants are born with.

I have no intelligent nor clever comments to contribute with, I just wanted to say that for me who is "only" genetically and biologically female - yet not transgender, this is like balm. Since a very young age, society has constantly implied and sometimes outright told me that I am not a girl, yet I've never felt like a guy either. Not belonging to the center area of the bell curve sucks sometimes, though mainly only when you get social repercussions for not fitting neatly in the stereotype of what your sex's gender is supposed to be like.
The ability to generalize - one of homo sapiens's greatest survival strengths as well as one of its greatest weaknesses... Bah.

( I probably should clarify - by "biologically" I mean big tits, vagina, regular periods and all that crap. I suspect my brain would be abnormal biologically, especially since I am likely to have been doused with an above average amount of testosterone for a female fetus in the uterus, because of the mother suffering from chronic stress among other things. Yet I clearly have a high amount of estrogen in my body (as well as higher amounts of testosterone than average). )

Chris -

You're being a patronising shit, which would be why I said you were. That you happened to be being a patronising shit in an intellectual conversation is neither fresh nor relevant to whether or not you're being an unmitigated asshole.

And please, prey tell, explain where I call those works and thinkers bullshit. Though throwing religious texts in there is rather a drag on your implied assertion they are not, I said no such thing. If you had the reading comprehension that my eight year old possesses, you might have noted that I was and still am, talking about the validity of definitions, not the works in question or any other.

However, this true statement is inappropriate as a rejoinder to the point I made, which is that the existence of human nature -- a set of behaviors so immune to cultural variation as to be most likely due to "nature" rather than "nurture" -- has been acknowledged for millennia.

Bullshit. The point I am making here is that this is bullshit.

You are trying to apply U.S. American(/Western) ideals, cultural context and definitions to an idea that has seen a great deal of variance throughout history, social structures, cultural contexts and co-cultural contexts. You want to interject Shakespeare and that particularly famous quote as though it means something where it certainly does not. While for quite a while that did in fact stand the test of time in the context of Western culture, it is not universal across cultures.

What you are throwing under this ill defined "human nature," includes a great deal of behaviour that doesn't span cultural divides. You're failing to account for the greatest flaw in most Western world psych experiments - especially in the U.S. - they mostly tell us about the behaviours of Western undergraduates, mostly white Western undergrads. You can't reasonably even generalise results to our entire culture, much less a completely different culture.

With that understood, lets explore this "human nature" you keep going on about. For a good bit of history, the same "heritability" that translated "human nature" also translated a person's station in life and generally their profession. This is not even close to universal, but it was a common theme in many cultures - including that of Shakespeare. The same archetype model that drove the "Divine Right of Kings," also fostered the transition of station and profession generationally through the parents. In other words, people commonly accepted this as the will of the gods or a given god.

We aren't talking about the same thing, which is why definitions are important and using bullshit definitions is useless. It is most certainly not possible to use them interchangeably. Words have different meanings, when used in different cultural contexts, even different intracultural contexts.

As I pointed out in my original statement, the range and magnitude of human nature is subject to debate, but its existence is beyond denial.

And as I have pointed out, both Greg and I agree with you on that. I have just been responding to your sloppy, slapdash critique of Greg and the ironic twist of the same sort of slop you erroneously accused Greg of. It is more than a little obvious you aren't actually reading what either Greg or I have written.

Take Greg's "agreement" with you, that promiscuity in men is hardwired. It's rather amusing, given that he has actually illustrated that promiscuity and sexual behaviours aren't universal across cultures. While in Western culture women may be less promiscuous than men, that is changing as it both becomes more culturally acceptable for them to fuck around and as they are able to better and better control their odds of getting pregnantAs I pointed out in my original statement, the range and magnitude of human nature is subject to debate, but its existence is beyond denial (there are, of course, cultures wherein the concerns about pregnancy don't apply to the equation).

Neither is male promiscuity universal. In cultural contexts where there is a particularly strong taboo against promiscuity in males, there may well be a very strong compulsion for monogamy.

Greg makes a very important point @42. While there is obviously a evolutionary impact on how we think, by necessity it needs to be extremely adaptable and it is. Culture is largely defined by our environment. Who we are is defined largely by our culture - or our environment defines who we are and we define culture (these are entirely the same, which is why I mention it). Homo sapeiens exists today because not only our protohuman ancestors were adaptable, but because we're adaptable too.

JL -

That is something that I understand quite well. When it comes to gender surveys, I tend to score quite fem, in spite of some rather protypical alpha male characteristics (being bipolar does impact this some, but atypically for bipolar). I am who I am and comfortably so. This includes both loving to hunt and being a better nurturer to my children than their mother and the equal of many mothers in that regard.

When you come down to it, people cross gender norms a lot more than they usually assume. As I pointed out in my original statement, the range and magnitude of human nature is subject to debate, but its existence is beyond denial. There are certainly some very strict gender norms that are exceedingly pervasive and even dangerous, but they are intracultural gender norms that generally don't translate across social structures and cultural contexts - at least not very well.

Take for example, masculine gender norms in Mexico and contrast them with U.S. American masculine gender norms. In the U.S., masculine gender norms aren't nearly as dependent on machismo as they are in Mexico. Mexican males (throughout most, not all of Mexico) are expected to be hyper-alpha male. U.S. American males, on the other hand, while expected to strictly adhere to certain gender norms, tend to actually look down on such extreme masculinity.

Yet when it comes to trans-women, Mexican males (depending on geography), uber-masculine as they are, don't think twice about a male born woman (vestidas - which doesn't translate quite perfectly to our conception of trans-women). Yet when we take a gander at U.S. American males and their attitudes about male born women, we see a very different response. Often a very violent one.

JL, all behaviors are products of a brain, which is a product of neurodevelopment which produces a phenotype. Behaviors are not products of a genotype, they are products of a phenotype. A genotype must be able to support the physiology that leads to the development of each and every phenotype that the genotype can support, but the number of phenotypes that a particular genotype can support is quite large but mostly unknown.

The development that happens in the utero environment is the most important environmental influence on the development of the adult phenotype, where the phenotype goes from a single cell (the fertilized egg) to ~ 10^12 cells at birth. The change from the infant at birth to the adult is tiny in comparison. It is only because we are ignorant of what those changes are that the changes in utero are discounted.

The infant brain at birth may or may not be a âblank slateâ (what ever that means). The fertilized egg is certainly a lot "blanker" than the infant brain at birth. The fetus in utero is certainly not being filled with cultural information, there isn't a pathway for that to happen. Until the brain forms and can decode language, environmental sounds can't convey meaning. There can be signaling due to stress reactions, blood pressure, hormones, cytokines, and my favorite nitric oxide. But the data transfer rate of these signaling pathways is very small. They can't convey enough information to specify complex behaviors. What they can do is trigger the production of a complex structure with enough plasticity that later development can tune that structure to produce anything.

It is analogous to how the immune system can produce 10^12 to 10^16 different antibodies. There isn't a gene for each antibody, there are genes that do essentially random stuff, and then the products of that random stuff are sorted into the ones that do what the immune system needs them to do.

That is probably what happens in the brain, the genes specify for sufficiently complex random stuff that later neurodevelopment can sort out into what is useful and what is not. Stress in utero tends to produce a larger brain, and tends to shift the developing fetus more on a autism-like phenotype. Testosterone in utero does that too. There is Simon Baron-Cohen's âextreme male brainâ hypothesis of autism (which I think is not correct, it is more an âextreme low nitric oxide brainâ, which male brains happen to overlap with).

In the context of behaviors, there is an overwhelming tendency to pathologize what ever one is not familiar with, to consider such things as âabnormalâ. This is bad and the wrong way to consider development. Development is a process. A normal âprocessâ may produce results that are not good, for example anaphylaxis is a ânormalâ process, but it can kill you. Because an anaphylactic reaction can kill you, is an individual that has an anaphylactic reaction âabnormalâ? No, organisms have immune systems that can support anaphylaxis because an immune system that can support anaphylaxis is superior to an immune system that cannot. Organisms evolved to minimize deaths due to infection (from too âweakâ an immune system) and from anaphylaxis (from too âstrongâ an immune system). It is the sum that is minimized, so there have to be instances where either one can be fatal.

It is the same with behaviors. Normal physiology supports normal development that can produce a whole range of human behavioral phenotypes. They are all ânormalâ, in that they are products of normal human development. Certain individuals pathologize those phenotypes of normal human development solely to give themselves justification for xenophobia, homophobia, bigotry and bullying behaviors. They are ânormalâ human behaviors too, I think that Stockholm Syndrome is a human behavior that develops in response to severe bullying in an attempt to prevent it from becoming lethal. I think preventing the bullying is a better approach, but bullies don't see it that way, hence obnoxious comments on blogs like this.

DuWayne, you offer a variety of opinions; I'll respond to a few before getting to my main point.

You'd like me to identify the place where you dismissed all those writings as bullshit. Please re-read the second paragraph in my #45, where I listed those writings as evidence against an earlier claim of yours. Note that in message #45, I offered no evidence other than those writings. Yet in your #46 you responded with this statement:

"Also forgive me for assuming we were actually talking science, rather than commonsensical bullshit."

The most important point is that you agree with me on my original point that the existence of human nature is beyond question. Thus, this entire argument has been without issue; you agree with my core point while violently and abusively disagreeing with my arguments in its favor.

But now I'd like to turn to my new point, guaranteed to amplify your anger into white-hot rage. You accuse me of being a patronizing shit. I cannot speak to the question of whether I am fecal matter, as my nose adapts to strong odors and so I would not be aware of it if I were. However, I can certainly confirm your statement that I am patronizing, because in fact I am certainly "patron" in the Latin sense. That is to say, I am your educational and intellectual superior and so I am teaching you rather than stooping to argue with you. I do not base my confidence in my intellectual and educational superiority on anything I was born with; rather, I attribute them to the decades of additional time I have had to acquire knowledge and refine my thinking. You are still early in your education; you have had only a few years to study serious topics. I'm in my sixties; I've had decades to build my intellectuum. With that kind of background, the only way I could fail to be your intellectual superior would be for me to be a drooling idiot, and since I observe no drool on my keyboard, I conclude that all those years of study have given me a huge advantage over you. When I was your age, I was just as ignorant as you are now; I expect that, with the passage of time, you'll learn and improve, just as I did. Sometimes, as an exercise in humility, I peruse some of my old writings from my twenties; it serves to remind me that my skills are the product of decades of labor, not any natural genius on my part.

Your verbal violence reminds me of a great scene from the book "Jurassic Park". The lawyer confronts a young tyrannosaurus and attempts to save himself by waving his arms and yelling ferociously. The small tyrannosaurus regards him silently for a moment, then eats him. All that verbal violence was without any significance, a mere posturing. Your attempt to enlarge your appearance through verbal fireworks is similarly impotent.

My reason for dispensing these humiliating observations -- a sinfully cruel act, I confess -- is to combat the assumption of intellectual egalitarianism that underlies so many discussions on the Internet. The blogosphere reeks with young testosterone-poisoned studs slinging their featherweight ideas around, secure in the knowledge that their zits and their ignorance can be hidden from view. It's a ploy to wrap oneself in the robes of adulthood. Like little girls wearing their mother's clothing as part of their play, these Internet studs drape their meager educations around themselves like Oxford dons in their doctoral robes. For the most part, I humor them, recalling how I did much the same thing at that age. However, I am today inspired to remind you and the world that we tyrannosaurs still have big teeth, and might just use them if it seems appropriate to your education.

Your best defense is to adhere strictly to the facts. The true egalitarianism of the world of ideas is that anybody armed with facts and logic can participate, regardless of age or education. Facts, evidence, and logic are like steel armor against the teeth of the tyrannosaurus. In a contest of opinions, my big teeth will rip through your soft flesh. But my true and valid facts, evidence, and logic are in no wise superior to anybody else's true and valid facts, evidence and logic. Confine yourself to true and valid facts, evidence, and logic, and you really can stand up to me.

Good luck, kid, from a patronizing old tyrannosaurus.

Chris, your comments are among those I was referring to in #55. I agree with you that there is such a thing as âhuman natureâ. Greg and DuWayne agree with that too. There is such a thing as âhuman natureâ. âHuman natureâ is what human beings exhibit. If a human exhibits a ânatureâ, then by definition that ânatureâ is âhuman natureâ.

âHuman natureâ so defined does not mean what you want it to mean; âbehaviors that you and individuals that you consider to be 'normal humans' exhibitâ.

Greg, DuWayne, and I, do not agree that there are âhuman naturesâ that are devoid of cultural influence. There is no data that supports that there are such things either. Virtually all of what some individuals have claimed to be âhuman natures devoid of cultural influenceâ are simply their personal ideas and preferences they are trying to impose on others and to use to denigrate others into âthe otherâ so the different behaviors they exhibit can be characterized as ânon-humanâ, so that the individuals exhibiting those behaviors can be characterized as ânon-humanâ, so the human niceties of respect and fair treatment can be dispensed with and such people can be maltreated, and in the limit enslaved and killed.

You don't have facts and logic on your side, you have bullying, obnoxious bullying based on xenophobia. Exhibiting xenophobia is a âhuman natureâ too, a rather obnoxious, petty, mean spirited human nature based on ignorance.

http://daedalus2u.blogspot.com/2010/03/physiology-behind-xenophobia.html

The reason people like you consider people with different behaviors to be non-human is because you are stunted. You are unable to appreciate that actual human beings can be different than you, can have different thinking processes, can have different ideas, can look differently and yet still be human. Your inability to perceive the behaviors of some humans as âhuman behaviorsâ is about your stunted ability to perceive things. Your inability to perceive them does not mean they are not there, only that you are so blind that you cannot see them.

Wow, daedalus2u, I don't know where you got the impressions you describe, but they have nothing whatsoever to do with either my statements or my beliefs. I am in complete agreement with the notion that human nature is subject to cultural influence. I have elsewhere summarized my own belief as follows: genetic factors establish the foundation for human behavior, and cultural factors build on that foundation to produce actual behavior. I strongly suspect that this is a statement that all of us would agree with. Thus, this discussion strikes me as having lots of loud disagreement over vapors, and a great deal of wild supposition. Why then don't we start from the italicized statement above and see where we might agree or disagree?

I don't agree that genetic factors establish the foundation for human behaviors other than in producing a brain that is "human enough" to support human behaviors.

There is no data to support this "genetic foundation" of human behaviors that you talk about. Lots of people want to believe it, and lots of people write as if it was true, and lots of people claim that there is data, and that the data supports their beliefs, but they are not correct.

OK, now we're talking about something substantial! Your position is ill-defined: you accede only that genetic factors produce a brain that is human enough to support human behaviors. What does this mean? For example, it has previously been acknowledged that genetic factors induce human males to promiscuity. Do you accept this statement? If so, then "a brain that is human enough to support human behaviors" means "a brain that is genetically included toward promiscuity". If that be so, then how can you draw a line between behaviors such as male promiscuity and any other behavior?

You argue that there is no data to support a genetic foundation for human behaviors. Do you deny the data regarding male promiscuity? Or is male promiscuity some sort of special exception? I think some further explication on your part would greatly clarify matters.

Chris, not all males are promiscuous. Promiscuity is a trait that some male brains have, some male brains do not have it. Promiscuity cannot be a âgeneticâ trait of a male brain if some genetically male brains do not have it.

Whether a particular male brain exhibits promiscuous behavior or not depends on the social environment that male brain was brought up in. There is no âdefaultâ behavior in the absence of a social environment.

Humans brought up in the absence of a social environment (i.e. feral children) exhibit pretty dysfunctional social behaviors. Are dysfunctional social behaviors the âdefaultâ? What does that even mean? The number of feral children is very small over human evolution. They are not significant in human evolutionary terms, only humans brought up in a social environment are.

However, I can certainly confirm your statement that I am patronizing, because in fact I am certainly "patron" in the Latin sense. That is to say, I am your educational and intellectual superior and so I am teaching you rather than stooping to argue with you.

If it makes you feel better to believe that, then by all means believe it. That I am in my mid-thirties and you are in your sixties doesn't make it true. You know virtually nothing about me and my experience in life and I know virtually nothing about you - it is impossible to say.

I will clarify a couple of things though, so as to make a little clearer where I am coming from. While I am new to formal education (second year of college, since dropping out of high school 18 years ago), I am most certainly not at the beginning of my education. I have been an avid reader since the age of two and have always been precocious enough to find people capable of clarifying things I don't understand. While I spent much of my early adulthood dealing with substance abuse problems and other mental illness, I was also spending time on college campuses the country over - finding people who could help me understand problems with psychology, philosophy (heavy on logic), sociology and a host of other interests.

Starting with professors I knew locally, I got letters of reference for my travels and hitched all over the U.S. I also read voraciously. While certainly not on a level with the professors I talked to, I was and am rather more knowledgeable than the average laymen. Philosophy, sociology, psychology and rather obscure aspects of music theory were my main focuses and I know my shit. My knowing my shit is illustrated by my managing 4.0s in all my psych classes, without doing a lick of studying and writing papers my instructors would expect from grad students.

Having managed to get on top of my substance abuse issues and my mental illness, I am thriving in the college environment. I am sucking everything I can out of my classes and my instructors, loving most every minute (though the stress can be a bit much on occasion, but that is because I am fulltime and a half). I was accepted without hesitation, to UofT, Knoxville - in spite of not meeting all of the qualifications (math is my downfall). Things have changed in my personal life and I will not be going, instead transferring locally and taking custody of my kids. The psych department I will be going into is excited to have me, as is the language department.

I am not saying this to claim I am your intellectual and educational superior. I am saying this because you seem to assume you know a lot more about me than you do. I was cutting my teeth on theology at nine and moved into logic (which I admittedly applied poorly to religion) and critical thinkers when I was eleven. I am not a pup and I am not beneath you in any meaningful sense of the word.

As for your concerns about "verbal violence," quit being a sanctimonious fucking prat. People who assume inadequacy, just because another person uses strong language are missing a depth of understanding of what it is to be human right now, here in this culture. You are assuming that I am using such language to be provocative or because I have nothing. This is not the case. I use that kind of language, because that is the language of my cultural context.

In your presumption of superiority, you seem to have missed understanding what it is I am talking about. That is sad for you. At your age, I have little doubt that in the field of behavioural psychology, you are decades behind the times - if you were ever actually there. I am arguing against your suppositions, because you seem rather keen on assuming that psych studies have something to say about humans in aggregate. That they indicate something about evolutionary components of human behaviour.

They do not. Mostly they tell us about the behaviour of young, white college students. Other studies - neurobiological studies - indicate that it is entirely possible that everything behavioural could very plausibly be environmental. There are few scientists who take that notion seriously - at least few worth mentioning, but that does call into question everything we assume about evolution/genetics driven behaviour. At some point it is likely that we will have more definite answers to these questions. With so much more to learn, we are constantly learning new and interesting things about the human brain and genetics.

It's in there somewhere and someday we will figure a lot more of it out. But making assertions about, say, human sexual behaviour and the influence of evolution on it are just not possible, except in very general terms. Like we can safely say that promiscuity among men and women isn't something that can be explained in evolutionary terms, because cultural contexts have an obviously profound influence on sexual behaviours. At the same time, it is patently absurd to say that evolution didn't play a role in human sexual behaviours. We can't know what that influence is at the moment, but we can know what it is not, because we can and have observed human sexuality across a great many cultures and found few universal behaviours.

But I suppose you will notice that I said fuck and shit a few times and decide that I have nothing valuable to contribute to the discussion. That's your loss, because your presumption of superiority aside, I am an exceptionally clever and extremely well read individual. I understand how science works and understand what it cannot tell us, based on the majority of psych studies.

Quite simple, oh mighty bright one; the data regarding male promiscuity is woefully incomplete. All that it tells us, is that in a few specific groups, male promiscuity is extremely prevalent compared to promiscuity in women.

Any more questions?

Actually DuWayne, I am not even sure the data actually says that.

If we count the number of times a man has sex with a woman, and the number of times a woman has sex with a man, the two numbers are exactly equal.

Here we have as perfect an example of the boolean error as I have seen:

You claim that, since some human male brains do not manifest this behavioral trait, it cannot be genetic in nature. There are some people who have genetic makeups that cannot be characterized as either male or females -- therefore, by your reasoning, there cannot be any such thing as males or females.

The basic mistake you make is the same one that Mr. Laden made earlier: extrapolating a simple boolean fact to contradict an arithmetic one. The fact that some males are not promiscuous does not provide evidence against a genetic proclivity towards male promiscuity. You believe that because something isn't absolutely, totally, black, it must therefore be white. The truth is that the matter is dark gray: most males are promiscuous, some are not.

Read again what I wrote:

genetic factors establish the foundation for human behavior, and cultural factors build on that foundation to produce actual behavior.

The fact that some males are not promiscuous does not contradict this statement in the slightest. Indeed, the fact that some males are not promiscuous is completely consistent with my statement.

Stop thinking in terms of absolutes, in terms of black and white, yes-or-no. Think instead in terms of tendencies, likelihoods, inclinations, and probabilities. James Clerk Maxwell wrote "The logic for this world is the calculus of probabilities." Take that to heart.

DuWayne, I'm glad that you've been learning. Keep at it. And now, if you please, let us return to discussing the issues.

Chris, again, you have no data to support your statement. You have no examples of humans exhibiting sexuality when those humans have not grown up in a social context. You are the one who wants to make gender and sexuality solely a genetically determined construct. I know it is more complicated than that.

Development is neither arithmetic nor boolean. It is chaotic. It is highly non-linear. (speaking of which Mandelbrot just died)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/us/17mandelbrot.html?ref=mathematics

What do âinitial conditionsâ mean in a highly non-linear coupled chaotic system? Not very much.

Suppose we accept your premise, what does it add to any understanding? Nothing. You have made a non-falsifiable statement.

If we look at the genotype of a brain, does it tell us if the person is promiscuous or not? No, it does not. Does it tell us if the person is male or female or not? No, it does not. So why are you so hung up on wanting a âgenetic foundationâ for human behaviors?

We know why most people want a genetic foundation for human behaviors, so they can âotherâ people with a different genetic background and consider them to be inferior. So they can justify the visceral hatred and disdain they already feel towards those people. So they can justify treating those people badly and denying them the human rights that ânormalâ people deserve.

I don't know for sure why you want so badly for there to be a genetic foundation of behavior, but I suspect it is for the same reasons that most racists and bigots do. So you can âotherâ people with a different genetic background. So you can justify not spending money educating people of ethnic backgrounds that are not your own.

So why do you so badly want there to be a genetic foundation for human behavior that you make it up? Is there any data that supports a genetic foundation for human behavior? Any data that is of sufficient fidelity to falsify the hypothesis that it is virtually all a product of social development with minimal genetic input?

I know there isn't, but you want to assume there is and make that your premise. Sorry, we are a bit more rigorous than that here.

Daedalus2u, you are babbling a great deal of nonsense; I really must insist that you take the time to assemble coherent thoughts if you wish me to take the trouble to respond. For example, you declare:

You have no examples of humans exhibiting sexuality when those humans have not grown up in a social context.

Inasmuch as we don't have any but a few extremely rare cases of humans (wolf children) who have not grown up in a social context, it's meaningless to discuss what kind of sexuality they exhibit. EVERYBODY grows up in a social context! Could you please confine your comments to something other than absurd fantasies?

Development is neither arithmetic nor boolean. It is chaotic. It is highly non-linear.

Again, you present logical absurdity. I never said that development is arithmetic or boolean. Here is what I wrote: "Think instead in terms of tendencies, likelihoods, inclinations, and probabilities." Again, please connect 2 and 2 to get 4, not Hinduism with citric acid to get horsemanship.

You write: Suppose we accept your premise, what does it add to any understanding? Nothing. You have made a non-falsifiable statement.

Really? First you deny the truth of this statement: "genetic factors establish the foundation for human behavior, and cultural factors build on that foundation to produce actual behavior", then you claim that it adds nothing to our understanding -- and then you claim that it is non-falsifiable. Which is it? False, uninformative or non-falsifiable? If it's false, as you claimed, then it must surely be falsifiable. Please make up your mind!

I can refute any of those claims singly, but I'd rather not waste my time, so if you could clarify, I'd appreciate it.

If we look at the genotype of a brain, does it tell us if the person is promiscuous or not?

That's not correct; the genotype does indeed specify an inclination or proclivity towards promiscuity. I can predict that the possessor of male genes will likely be more promiscuous than the possessor of female genes. We can then measure promiscuity rates among large groups of such persons and determine whether the prediction is statistically confirmed. Have you the slightest doubt that the outcome of such measurements will bear out the prediction? I expect that you'll engage in some shabby arm-waving to deny the promiscuity of males. If so, all I can do in response is to shake my head at the lack of intellectual integrity demonstrated by such perversity.

If we look at the genotype of a brain, does it tell us if the person is promiscuous or not? No, it does not. Does it tell us if the person is male or female or not? No, it does not.

There are these things called "X chromosomes" and "Y chromosomes" that do indeed tell us the gender of the individual. I suggest that you consult a high-school biology text for confirmation of my claim.

why are you so hung up on wanting a âgenetic foundationâ for human behaviors?

I don't want a genetic foundation for human behaviors; I don't impose my personal preferences on truth. I instead observe the truth and follow it wherever it takes me, regardless of whether I find the results distasteful. Indeed, when I find my tastes in conflict with reality, I chide myself that I must be out of syntony with reality. Do you impose your tastes upon your perception of truth?

We know why most people want a genetic foundation for human behaviors, so they can âotherâ people with a different genetic background and consider them to be inferior

Perhaps this is so; I don't pretend to understand other people's motivations. I do, however, have a clear understanding of my own motivations, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that none of your speculations about the motivations of other people have any relevance to my own thinking; I suggest that you abandon such speculations as they have zero relevance to my own case.

Is there any data that supports a genetic foundation for human behavior?

I suggest that you consult any of the fine books of Mr. Steven Pinker, Leda Cosmides, Sara Blaffer Hrdy, Steven Mithen, Christopher Wills, Terence Deacon, or even Robert Wright or Geoffrey Miller. I can provide titles and ISBN numbers if you wish. The evidence in support of the basic notion that genetic factors play an important role in human behavior has been around for years; you really have to keep your head buried deeply in the ground to lack awareness of it. I would especially recommend Ms. Hrdy's work "Mother Nature" as a rigorous and thorough presentation of a life's work on this subject. And guess what: Ms. Hrdy is neither a bigot, a racist, a misogynist, nor a homophobe. She's a scientist.

DuWayne, I'm glad that you've been learning. Keep at it. And now, if you please, let us return to discussing the issues.

Oh, you mean like I did and you ignored? Fucking prat.

Check it out:

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2010/10/the_evolution_of_football_and…

The basic mistake you make is the same one that Mr. Laden made earlier:

Sorry, I was out of town. What did I do wrong? I'm sure I've not made any boolean errors. The suggestion is preposterous, as a matter of fact.

Greg, how can you dismiss as preposterous a comment that you haven't read? Please read my comment #43 and then tell me what you think.

Our culture (most cultures?) defines male and female historically by their phaenotype or today by the presence of X and Y chromosomes. There is an abundance of archetypical people whose personality fits well with all the stereotypes developed over time by convenience but also empirically. The big mountain peak of the bell-curve.
BUT gender expression, or rather personality expression (within a culture that more or less supports or at least tolerates it) seems to cover a much wider, overlapping range - probably controlled by hormone levels/balances, which are probably mainly controlled genetically. So you get spacially-oriented huntresses and male closeted shoe-collectors.

What? I am guessing this post is supposed to be tongue n' cheek. But are you really trying to compare your self to all of humanity? Populations evolve not individuals. I am sick of this chicken and the egg type argueing.

Are you really going to tell me that 'culture' can or did exist independently of each other? The only arguments that makes sense for are religious pre-deterministic arguments. If you believe that everything you are was created by god before you were even born, then ok. If you believe in evolution, then culture evolved. It's an adaptive measure that creates group cohesion and probably helped a lot of prehistoric humans to survive. It's basically mammal herd mentality on steroids. Anyways, not bad for a evo article comparing football and shoes./s

Chris, I told you what I think. I'll rephrase: I think your critique is bizarre. I don't have an answer for it other than cover up that one paragraph that has made you crazy if you really think it is that hard to take.

Greg, the concept I argue is straightforward and logically substantive. I'll therefore take your inability to provide a cogent rebuttal to my critique as acquiescence. Although it could conceivably be due to a gaping hole in your comprehension, I rather doubt that, as you're obviously a bright person. Perhaps you simply don't want to take the time to provide a rebuttal; that's understandable (especially since, IMO, it would take you a lot of effort to compose a decent rebuttal). Your task in this blog is not so much as to be right as to command eyeballs, and you can get more eyeballs with less effort by writing new stories.

Best wishes.

Greg, the concept I argue is straightforward and logically substantive.

No, no it isn't.

Or, it's very logical and straight forward, but in a sophistic kinda way. Such arguments can be very distracting.

Well, DuWayne, I'm sure that you can substantiate your denial with some logic and evidence, all of course laced with a vocabulary of obscenities certain to entertain. Perhaps some "fucking prat" syllogisms? After all, if one obscenity is good, then two must be better, and fifty even better than that. Indeed, why bother with any words other than obscenities? For your purposes, it's all the same! ;-)

Greg, I didn't see your comment before posting my response to DuWayne. As to your response: fair enough; the distinction between sophistry and sophistication is a subjective matter. Let's call it a day.

Chris! OK, I decided to directly address your comment.

Greg, there are some serious logical flaws in your argument arising from a mixing of the arithmetic with the boolean. For example, you present your basic thesis as:

There is not a good argument to be found in the realm of behavioral biology for why American Women shop while their husbands sit on the bench in the mall outside the women's fashion store fantasizing about a larger TV on which to watch the game.

That was not my basic thesis. This post has more than one "basic thesis" including: 1) The pleistocene is not what evolutinoary phsychologists have traditionallyi said it is; 2) When confronted with that backpedaling that is nonproductive happens; 3) modules may well exist but there is no compelling reason to believe that they are hard coded by genes that were subject to selection as EP's claim; and 4) a couple of other things. The comment that you cite as my "basic thesis" was a literary device and a pretty clear statement, and verged on an absurd joke.

Therefore, this stuff:

Which has virtually nothing to do with what I said in my post, and which I found sufficiently annoying that, I admit, I stopped reading your comment.

While your basic argument has many solid points, your conclusion is logically flawed. Your evidence demonstrates that some conclusions regarding the role of genetic factors in behavior are weak; your evidence does not contradict the basic notion that genetic factors exert influences on human behavior.

Here is where you are totally wrong. No one is failing to recognize that genetic factors influence mammalian behavior. Evolutionary psychology does not, however, assert that. It asserts something much more specific and qualitatively different. Their assertion can not be assumed to be a "basic notion" ... and I assume by "basic notion" you mean something that we assume to be true until proved untrue. Quite the contrary. The assertions of Evolutionary Psychology are novel and revolutionary, even extraordinary.

Chris, you are telling me that I've got it wrong because I have not disproved the presumption that genes influence behavior. However, I did not address that presumption. So, perhaps we can adjust what you are saying: Perhaps you are telling me that I've got it wrong because I have not disproved the assertions of evolutionary psychology, which you take to be "basic notions" .. i.e., assumed to be true.

This is the problem with this whole discussion. Your typical Western trained person comes to the table "knowing" that certain things are "true" including the existence of races, the detailed genetic coding of behavior, and so on. Like the Victorians coming to the table "knowing" that they deserved to rule the world. Give me a break!

Then there is this:

Huh? During the 12 thousand years of the Holocene in the region where the Ju/'hoansi bushmen lived, they lived there in an environment much like it is today except in one or two spots that may have been a tiny bit dryer or weter. Durin the previous 24,000 years of the terminal Pleistocene, the environment in that region fluctuated fro one in which the Okavango overflowed a lake that does not exist today and formed a new, enormous lake in Central Botswana, and a period of time when the entire region was so dry that no archaeological evidence of any human has ever been found for that time period.

Your whole Boolean logic thing is something that one might apply to a philosophical question. This, however, is not a philosophical question. This is a question of measurement and data. The evolutionary psychology literature very clearly makes out the Pleistocene as a consistent, unary, long period of time with little variation. This assumption was made by psychologists, who did not know what they were talking about. They were wrong. Boolean? Arithmetic? Bah, humbug!

You are correct that my relatives are arithmetic and not Boolean. You are incorrect that this is the evidence for this argument. That's just me relating the reality that bell curves not only overlap but they sometimes utterly disappear (as has happened with some sex difference measures), occasionally revers, or are often highly suspicious for one reason or another.

Do you write/edit Wikipedia articles?

I'll keep that mind, but you are making part of this up. The term "genetic determinism" has never been a boolean concept (in the hands of actual behavioral geneticists). Have you read any of the literature? Had you, you would have seen that that is not what is meant by "genetic determinism." The terms "genetic determinism" and "genetic influence" are roughly interchangeable to behavioral geneticists. You have made the error of thinking of "determinism" as a strong thing, strong enough to be on or off (boolean), and "influence" to be a vaguer thing, something that might run along a spectrum.

You have taken two terms that are similar, both of which refer to arithmetic properties of relationships, and dichotomized them. You have, indeed, booleanized them!!!!11!!1

Which is obviously some kind of really serious error.

Oops, didn't see your comment while I was posting my comment.

"the distinction between sophistry and sophistication is a subjective matter"

actually, it's a clear boolean distinction. Which you are arithmeticized!

Chris -

I did in fact address your comment and with a minimum of swearing even. But rather than actually addressing the comments, you went all in for your bullshit superiority complex. I understand that your understanding of behavioural psychology is woefully out of date, but that is no excuse for being a fucking prat when it is pointed out to you. I also understand that you believe that commonsensical definitions throughout the centuries is relevant to a discussion about the science of behaviour. That is no excuse for being a dismissive, condescending asshat when someone points out that and explains how you're wrong.

But I suppose when you've got nothing, it is nice to have language that offends your delicate sensibilities, to give you an excuse for ignoring your ignorance.

Greg, thanks for your detailed response to my points in the blog. I have taken some time to think over your points, and written up a long rejoinder.

You reject my characterization of your basic thesis, offering instead the explanation that what I was objecting to was more light-hearted in style. OK, I can happily say, "Oops, my sense of humor failed me." However, you then proceed to offer these as your basic points:

1) The pleistocene is not what evolutinoary phsychologists have traditionallyi said it is; 2) When confronted with that backpedaling that is nonproductive happens; 3) modules may well exist but there is no compelling reason to believe that they are hard coded by genes that were subject to selection as EP's claim; and 4) a couple of other things.

I am appalled by these statements: they're drivel! Let's go over them one at a time. First: The pleistocene is not what evolutinoary phsychologists have traditionallyi said it is;

For this to make any sense, you have to specify what it is that you claim evolutionary psychologists have traditionally said it is. This looks for all the world like one of those "some say" statements: "Some say that Greg Laden is an orphan-raping litterbug, but that's not quite the truth". Your statement is so devoid of detail that it could really mean almost anything. Yes, it's absolutely true that the Pleistocene is not what some people have said it was (some people said it was a time of wild orgies and lollipop manufacturing). If you want to make a point, Greg, MAKE IT! Don't just dump a vague nothingburger statement onto the world. That's an abuse of electrons.

Moving on to your next point: 2) When confronted with that backpedaling that is nonproductive happens; Who? What? When? Where? How? What in the world are you talking about? If I'm going to ask my reader to take the time to read what I have to say, I actually SAY something! This statement lacks content.

3) modules may well exist but there is no compelling reason to believe that they are hard coded by genes that were subject to selection as EP's claim;

As written, this concedes that there may be compelling reasons to believe that mental modules are hard coded by genes that were subject to selection in ways other than that "EP" claims. Are there mental modules that are hard coded by genes that were subject to selection in ways consistent with the writings of Sara Blaffer Hrdy? Leda Cosmides? Steven Pinker? Your statement certainly suggests the possibility.

4) a couple of other things. Only a couple? ;-)

I'm reminded of a quote by Abraham Lincoln to the effect that he knew a politician who could pack more words into fewer ideas than anybody he'd ever met. Your post and your response both present a roiling ocean of words that, under careful analysis, don't say anything. In this sense, your case against EP is rather like the creationist's case against evolution: when all is said and done, they don't say anything. As much as I hold the global warming deniers in contempt, I have to confess that they're way ahead of you on one point: they actually have some points to make. Their points are way wrong, usually involving some sort of twisting of the science, but at least there's a "there" there. I can't say as much for either your original post or your response.

No one is failing to recognize that genetic factors influence mammalian behavior.

You're not saying that, but several of the commentators here are doing so. Some of my responses are to them. I really should ignore these ignorami.

Evolutionary psychology does not, however, assert that. It asserts something much more specific and qualitatively different.

WHAT? You are maddeningly unspecific here. You say that they're wrong, but you won't reveal what they're wrong about.

Their assertion can not be assumed to be a "basic notion" ... and I assume by "basic notion" you mean something that we assume to be true until proved untrue.

No, that's not what I mean. Evo Psych is a theory now (a broad collection of related hypotheses) that must stand the test of criticism. But you're not offering any criticism: you're just rejecting the theory without explanation.

The assertions of Evolutionary Psychology are novel and revolutionary, even extraordinary.

WHAT assertions?!??! Again with the complete lack of specificity! Are you attacking a label or a theory?

Perhaps you are telling me that I've got it wrong because I have not disproved the assertions of evolutionary psychology, which you take to be "basic notions" .. i.e., assumed to be true.

Nope. My original criticism was specific to the logical error of using arithmetic evidence to arrive at boolean conclusions -- but at this point I think we're arguing more fundamental questions.

Whoa! Talk about prejudice! This is the kind of statement that leads me to suspect that the opponents of Evo Psych are merely intellectual bigots. I'm not a Victorian, nor am I a racist, sexist, homophobe, Nazi, Tea Party Proponent, or any other such person. I am interested in a scientific question, and if your contribution to the question is to dismiss your opponents as racists, then I can safely conclude that you have no useful contribution to make. And, BTW, are you suggesting that Eastern trained persons (or Northern-trained or Southern-trained?) are intellectually pure?

Huh? During the 12 thousand yearsâ¦ â¦found for that time period.

Did you have a point to make?

Your whole Boolean logic thing is something that one might apply to a philosophical question.

No, my point is about logic -- your argument is logically flawed. That's not a philosophical argument -- that's a scientific argument.

This is a question of measurement and data.

Not quite. It's a question of measurement and data analyzed by means of logical reasoning -- and your logic is flawed.

The evolutionary psychology literature very clearly makes out the Pleistocene as a consistent, unary, long period of time with little variation.

Perhaps so. Perhaps the Evo Psych literature is full of idiotic statements. But your observation is without issue. If you want to challenge a claim, then you have to first state what the claim is, then provide evidence and logic against it. Your evidence is that the Pleistocene was not absolutely, positively, 100% stable. I doubt that any period in evolutionary history was absolutely, positively, 100% stable. What you have to show is that the instabilities in the Pleistocene were so great that consistent evolutionary pressures could not exist. This will be rather difficult to establish, given that Homo Sapiens (and a great many other species) did in fact undergo evolutionary change. If those changes were not consequent to evolutionary pressures, what caused them? Bubble gum machines?

bell curves not only overlap but they sometimes utterly disappear (as has happened with some sex difference measures), occasionally revers, or are often highly suspicious for one reason or another.

Yes, and bubble gum machines aren't bell curves. Perhaps you had a point to make with respect to Evo Psych?

Do you write/edit Wikipedia articles?

I've contributed to only one, in which I had some special expertise to contribute.

Have you read any of the literature? Had you, you would have seen that that is not what is meant by "genetic determinism." The terms "genetic determinism" and "genetic influence" are roughly interchangeable to behavioral geneticists.

Hoo, boy. What does a term mean? We can argue about this all day, because the term "genetic determinism" has been used in many different ways. I deny your claim that its use in scientific discussions is well-defined. It's true that, the closer you get to laboratory genetics, the narrower the meaning of the term. Unfortunately, its meaning in Evo Psych is nowhere near as clear as you suggest. I sense a semantic drift away from the term "genetic determinism" and towards "genetic influence". This drift seems to be concomitant with the growing distaste for using the term "nature versus nurture", for much the same reason: it's a polarizing term that casts the scientific issues in simplistic black-and-white terms.

You have made the error of thinking of "determinism" as a strong thing, strong enough to be on or off (boolean), and "influence" to be a vaguer thing, something that might run along a spectrum.

Uh, gee, perhaps you might want to look up the two terms in a dictionary, Greg.

Having followed the subject for nearly twenty years now, I've been on the lookout for some counterbalancing arguments. It's a character oddity of mine: I went so far as to read Mr. Behe's anti-evolution book (yes, it really is tripe) as well as to spend some time following the global warming denier sites of Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre (yep, they're tripe, too). In the same way, I've been looking for something similar for evo psych -- and I have yet to find anything with as much actual substance as I've found in Behe, McIntyre, or Watts. There's lots of emotional denialism, but no sober reasoning. I was hoping that you might be able to provide as much, which is why I poked at you. I think you can do a real service by putting together a solid, well-reasoned critique of evo psych. I looked at one book (whose title escapes my Swiss cheese memory) that purports to critique evo psych, and it did offer some actual arguments, but I found it unsatisfyingly vague. Perhaps you can tackle the problem.

I hope that you are not personally insulted by the ferocious intellectual arguments I present. I operate on a "render unto Caesar" philosophy with regard to ideas versus people: I am a Tyrannosaurus Rex towards ideas and a teddy bear towards people. I have enjoyed your blog and recommend it to others.

Oops! I failed to include in italics a quote from you, thereby rendering my post rather confusing. Here's the correct rendition of that portion:

For this to make any sense, you have to specify what it is that you claim evolutionary psychologists have traditionally said it is.

Chris, you seem to have gotten so caught up in the superiority conferred by your years that you've forgotten there's a blog post here. See paragraph 13 (or thereabouts, if I've counted incorrectly).

In fact, you might want to read the entire post again. Or not, since you really just seem to be trolling rather than engaging with the topic in any specific way yourself.

Stephanie, I have read Greg's post several times to make certain that I'm on track here, and Greg's assertions regarding the position of Evo Psych are vague. That's why I have taken so much time to try to get him to clarify his statements. If you have any constructive comments to offer (aside from accusing me of trollery), I'd be happy to discuss Evo Psych.

"I am appalled by these statements: they're drivel! Let's go over them one at a time. "

I'm a busy man, Chris. Don't give me an 1800 word comment that starts with a statement like that. It just could not possibly interest me enough to read it. I've spent much of the last 25 year studying this issue. Your comments do not really draw my attention, though it is possible that brief clearly worded questions posed in a civil and polite manner would.

I really did look back at your first comment thinking there might be something there. I gave you that chance. You failed then. I'm not giving you the chance this time.

No, Chris, I don't think you have read the post very carefully. If you have, you haven't put the pieces together very well.

Take your favorite topic of male promiscuity. The evo psych argument Greg is taking on here is that men are genetically predisposed to being more promiscuous than women based on human evolution over a particular period. His argument is not that some men aren't relatively promiscuous, thus no go. His argument is that if you look at the (actual) people living under the (actual) conditions that evo psych postulates shaped modern human behavior, those specific populations are not where you find the tendency toward male promiscuity. Those conditions don't select for male promiscuity.

Is that an argument that no males are genetically predisposed to promiscuity? No. Is it saying that no one doing any kind of evolutionary psychology has a leg to stand on? No.

It is, however, a falsification of the framework that evo psych is using to argue that male promiscuity must be genetically coded for. The same goes for other standard male/female behavior patterns that evo psych is used to justify. If you don't find those patterns selected for under those conditions, it's time to find a new framework.

This isn't that hard.

First, a response to Stephanie: I believe that you misstate the relevant issues here. Male promiscuity is not the result of Pleistocene evolutionary pressures, and I don't recall anybody making that claim. Instead, male promiscuity, as Greg has pointed out, is a trait arising from the different metabolic investments of males and females in procreation, a difference that can be traced back far earlier than the Pleistocene. Greg himself made this point. Your confusion over this matter illustrates the problem we have: you folks (as a group) are so intent on making grand generalizations that you just can't be bothered to nail down with any precision what it is that you're arguing. These last 88 comments are studded with mismatches between arguments and evidence and a complete absence of clear definition. The entire discussion has been a mishmosh, and my efforts to get some sort of precision have been met with obscenity, denial, or just plain "I'm too busy to get specific."

Greg, I understand your desire not to get involved in a long discussion of the actual science; that's a lot of work, and you've got eyeballs to attract and ads to sell. So I'm willing to walk away from this. But I think you deserve to hear my hidden agenda. I'm a fierce advocate for the intellectual independence of science, and a ferocious opponent of the tendency to inject non-scientific ideologies into scientific inquiry.

For example, I am very much opposed to the intrusion of religion into science. Creationists attempt to impose their spiritual beliefs upon science. I find that heinous, and I oppose it at every opportunity. In the same way, global warming deniers are not really arguing science; their agenda is political, not scientific, and they subordinate scientific honesty to political ideology. I oppose that just as fiercely.

This discussion is no different: you and several other people have been reluctant to get into the science itself. While you (as a group) have occasionally brought up a few scientifically worthy points, the great bulk of this discussion has been ideological rather than scientific in nature. You (the group) have made lots of grand statements without bothering to provide even a precise wording of your meaning. It is especially telling that several persons, yourself (Greg) included, have raised matters of social policy (to wit, racism) that have no bearing on the science itself. I believe that you are no different from the creationists and AGW deniers in subordinating science to your political ideology. You don't like racism -- an admirable sentiment that I share -- but the difference between us is that you reject open, honest scientific inquiry because of your concerns about racism. I subordinate my personal tastes to objective truth; if science were to discover that left-handers tend to be sexual perverts, that blue-eyed people tend to have difficulties with math, or that purple-skinned people score lower on tests of social cognitive performance, I won't scream bloody murder -- I'll shrug my shoulders and accept those tentative results. What we do about those scientific results is an entirely different matter. If society chooses to discriminate against left-handers, idolize blue-eyed people, or send purple-skinned people to death camps, that's a political matter, not a scientific one. We shouldn't mix science with religion, and we shouldn't mix science with politics. Science can inform our political deliberations, but political preferences should never, ever intrude upon scientific inquiry.

I acknowledge again that there have been some attempts at scientific arguments here, but they have been brief, elliptical, secondary, or overly vague. I very much hope that someday I'll find somebody who can offer a robust case against some specific claims of Evo Psych. But after many attempts, I am abandoning hope that I'll find such a person here. Like Diogenes, I'll just have to take my search elsewhere.

Best wishes, and adieu to you all.

Chris, wow. You are one fucked up dude. Do you know that you are not making any sense at all? Time for an adjustment in the meds, old boy.

Could someone please kill this troll? This was an interesting discussion until he hijacked it.

I heard the show and loved both parts of it! I've read the Adapted Mind and I think this is a fair critique of the ideas in it. Modules have some traction as entities, but not so much as evolved structures, any more than cultural traditions do, really.

"Your confusion over this matter illustrates the problem we have: you folks (as a group) are so intent on making grand generalizations....."

sometimes words just speak for themselves.

Chris, you are an insulting, stupid twit. You claim that one blog post that summarizes an entire field of study should have all of the details that your tiny little brain seems to think are important. You claim that everyone else lacks the ability to think logically, yet your ranting is almost aphasic in it's rambling. You have insulted several people on this thread, and now you are ranting about the "group" of us who all have it wrong.

You need to go back to your computer games and your self-written and self-aggrandizing wikipedia bio. You say good bye in your last comment, but I have enough experience with obsessive neurotics such as yourself to know that you'll be back because you can't control yourself. And if you do post another comment, unless it is a) very very brief and b) a very sincere apology, I'll delete it, because I really and truly want to help you keep your promise.

It might have been possible for you to actually contribute to this conversation. But you are a paranoid obsessive megalomaniac. You can get help for that, but until you do, you are too annoying to be tolerated. Until you get help for your condition, you are of no use in this conversation or anything like it.

Greg, this statement is for your consumption only; I expect that you won't publish it, which is fine with me. By treating this as a fight rather than a discussion, you set yourself up for failure. And the fact that you refuse to publish my post demonstrates that you have decided that you lost that fight. If I were rude, calling people "fucking prats", I could understand your refusal, but we already know that you have no problems with people being that rude. And you're the one who's been calling names ("insulting, stupid twit", "tiny little brain", "aphasic", "obsessive neurotic", "paranoid obsessive megalomaniac", etc), not me. Until you can figure out the distinction between disagreeing over ideas and personal confrontation, you will continue to experience the disappointments that have already marked your career. Some Eastern philosophy would serve you well: the sinner hurts himself most. Your anger is killing you.

I sent that previous post to your email address so as to keep this out of public view, but your contact address is broken.

Oh, and I had nothing to do with that Wikipedia bio. My contribution was on Erasmus.

As I said, you can not stay away. You are obsessed. I think maybe you have fallen in love with me and are now stalking me.

Chris, my email address works. Emailing should not be hard. If you find it to be hard, something may be wrong with you. Again, adjust the meds.

My career and my life in general has been nothing like a disappointment, but thank you very much for your concern. And, all of my insults were sincere. Well, toned down a bit, but accurate and heart felt.

I know the difference between disagreeing on an issue and a personal attack. I have not disagreed with you on a substantive issue because you did not present substantive claims. You came to the table with insulting babbling gibberish. That is why no one has responded to you positively or respectfully. It is not going to get any better.

The Chris Crawford breakdown is now part of the Googlosphere. I wonder how long it will take before it is added to your Wikipedia bio?

That is all, Chris. No more blog for you.

A good day for birds.

gregladen — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 20:12:02 +0000

A good day for birds.

This was not an intensive bird watching day. This was a day driving to the cabin, sitting in the cabin writing, looking out the window, driving to run an errand, going to town for dinner, sitting in the cabin looking out the window some more, etc.

But the birds insisted on performing. So I thought I'd give you a list.,

En route north from the Twin Cities:

Two probable trumpeter swans heading west.
A flock of about 45 cormorants heading north. Leech Lake look out!
Near Fort Ripley: Rough Legged Hawk?
Blue Jay
Nisswa, overlookng Round Lake: Bald Eagle in tree
Lesser Scaup (small flock)

At the Cabin (Woman Lake):

Bald Eagle 1 (or two) of our nesting pair. Bald Eagle 3 (yearling).
Loons 1 and 2 feeding.
Loons 1 and 2 feeding with otter.
Loons 1 and 2 getting harassed by BE 3
Loons 1 and 2 joined by interloping male Loon 3, displays, much ado for a while, Loon 3 leaves (unlike three years ago, when one of the two males died in the ensuing fight)
White throated sparrow
Hooded mergansers (2 males breeding plus 1 female)
Red breasted nuthatch
White breated nuthatch
Phoebes
BC Chickadees
Various woodpeckers (sound only)
Common Goldeneye (sitting on edge of ice in the lake)

Longville:

RW Blackbirds
Loon

South of Longville

Bald Eagle sitting alone in the forest.

The above does not count numerous LBB's unidentified.

gregladen Sat, 04/25/2009 - 16:12

Tags

Aves (birds)

Nature-Nurture

Notes from the North Country

Another reason that it's a god day for birds:
The latest flu outbreak is being blamed on mammals for a change.

Sounds wonderful...in central California, the only birds I saw today were blurs flying away from the camera as soon as I had them in the view finder...sigh.

Race, Gender, IQ and Nature

gregladen — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 12:55:30 +0000

Race, Gender, IQ and Nature

Nature, the publishing group, not the Mother, has taken Darwin's 200th as an opportunity to play the race card (which always sells copy) and went ahead and published two opposing views on this question: "Should scientists study race and IQ?

The answers are Yes, argued by Stephen Cici and Wendy Williams of the Dept of Human Development at Cornell, and No, argued by Steven Rose, a neuroscientist at Open University.

I would like to weigh in.

The real answer, as is so often the case, is "You dumbass, what kind of question is that? Think about it further and rephrase the question!"

But I don't think they are going to do that.

I find it very interesting that even though the question does not mention IQ across gender, the details of the 'debate' (disguised as 'rules') actually specify that the commentators will tackle both race and gender links. Kinda proving that Nature is indeed playing the race card.

I like the idea of addressing both the questions of gender and race in relation to any differences (IQ or whatever). The course that I have taught in many forms in the past, and will likely teach again next Spring, does this. I like to do this because of the very important difference of differences. Gender is, biologically, much much more "real" than race. Gender is demonstrably real (in many aspects) and race is demonstrably not real (in almost all aspects). Also, almost all race differences we see bandied about are linked to nefarious racism one way or another. Gender differences, however, run the full spectrum from really destructive to very positive, with a lot of difficult ambiguity in the in between parts. So, looking at the myriad of purported gender differences first, then race second, turns out to be very very interesting. (One could do it the other way round as well, but for various reasons this works better in the context of my class.)

Let me say a few things about each of these papers first (citations below), then I would like to make a few broader remarks about gender, race, and "IQ."

Steven Rose does a very good job of explaining all the reasons why the answer to this particular question should be "No" ... although I hope he would also agree with me that this is not exactly the question that should be asked. He rightly discusses motivation, noting that we are busy comparing certain "races" by IQ while utterly ignoring equally oft constructed multichotomies of difference.

The categories judged relevant to the study of group differences are clearly unstable, dependent on social, cultural and political context. No one, to my knowledge, is arguing for research on group differences in intelligence between north and south Welsh (although there are well-established average genetic differences between people living in the two regions). This calls into question the motivation behind looking for such specific group differences in intelligence, sheds doubt on whether such research is well-founded, and begs whether answers could possibly be put to good use.

He does not spend enough time on, but does address, the fundamental flaw of the question: If race is not a valid categorization of people, then how do we justify funding scientific research of it? He also notes that while people may bellyache about adjusting IQ scores across 'racial' groups, no one seems to complain about nor notice the adjustment of IQ scores between gender, whereby boy's scores are raised to make them seem equal to girls. Who are smarter, obviously.

The other side of the coin argued by Cici and Williams is the usual drek that should not pass for scientific discourse. Race should be studied because ... it is truth. Race should be studied because Stalin tried to stop this kind of thing. Race should be studied because ... Larry Summers and James Watson and others have been victimized by the Liberal Left.

Whatever whatever.

I would like to note that the "yes" side is being argued by geneticists. That is pretty typical. Geneticists don't study intelligence, they study genes and they overrate the value of knowledge of genetics and always have. The "no" side is argued by a neurbiologist. Neurobiologists understand things like culling and plasticity. Do you know what culling is? If not you don't have a valid opinion about race and IQ. That would be like not knowing what an "Internal Combustion Engine" and a "transmission" are and thinking you have a valid idea of how to fix your car's drive train. You'd be wrong.

About Gender vs. Race and IQ (or any other trait): Gender is both very real and highly constructed. It is probably often more constructed by context and upbringing than ever race is, but there are real aspects of gender. The vast majority of individuals who are constructed as women cannot inseminate a person with viable sperm in the absence of special technology. The vast majority of individuals who are constructed as men cannot carry and birth a baby at this time. Except in that one movie. This is for a number of biological reasons. The evidence suggests that a certain number of measurable gender differences in behavior between various genders are linked to biological differences and probably have something to do with hormonal conditioning which, in turn, may be mediated in some cases by behavior and cultural or social environment (so even hormonal differences are not entirely independent of constructed context). But there is all sorts of biological stuff going on there. And everything in the above paragraph applies to rats as well as humans.

Of course, you don't inherit your gender, exactly. Well, OK, there is an ongoing argument that gay-osity is heritable. Maybe or maybe not. The argument seems to gain strength then get shot down again and again, like one of those tings many people need to believe is true but isn't. If it is true, it is pretty wishy washy and depends a lot on stuff that is in turn hard to pin down. But your basic maleness vs. femaleness with respect to reproductive parts and so on is basically not inherited but is provided genetically, as we all know.

"Race" on the other hand is inherited, but in a very complex way. Since race is a social construct, two elements are needed to produce a certain race. First, there must be a construct extant that responds so some signal (like skin color or language dialect), then there must be a signal produced by a particular genetic variant (like skin color) or, in some cases, just a construct (like language dialect).

Imagine a racist act. Many racist acts occur in a broader social context and can be understood by all the people in that cultural milieu as such. Racists acts often have names or commonly understood index terms associated with them. Most people know at least roughly what the racist act is, how it is done, to whom (which race) it is done and by whom (which race) it is done, etc. That is the socially constructed racist act, and linked to it is a socially constructed race.

Then there are the people. Among the people there will be allelic variation ... everybody has the same genes, but the genes themselves have variants ... alleles ... that result in different phenotypes. So among the people there will be individuals of one socially constructed race and individuals of another socially constructed race, and the defined differences and identities will be an interaction between the alleles and the social constructs.

So if you have a handful of alleles that make you seem to be a Native American, for instance, some professor of higher education may look at you and think "Oh, another one of these guys. Last Native American I had to deal with .... well that didn't go so well. Let's get rid of this guy."

That was the expression of a genetic trait possessed by the victim of a racist act. The genotype was the set of alleles that code for Native Americanosity, and the trait, in its fully expressed glory, was a racist act that emerged from the social context.

The same sorts of things happen with respect to both gender and race. In all cases it is hard to draw lines or make clear links between genotype and phenotypes. It is not so hard to understand the power relationships that usually drive the acts themselves. Even if most people engaged in these gendered and race-driven act are not cognizant of the power relationships, they are usually there.

Research in gene-behavior interaction is important. Research in genetic variation is important. Research based on either a race model (of any kind) or a simple two-step gender model is neither important or valid because such research is based on assumptions that not only cart-before-horse but are also sufficiently discredited to be abandoned. And, I suspect that not too much of this research is actually being funded anyway. A fair amount is published, but I'd love to see the actual link between funding source, proposal, research, and publication. I'd wager there is some disconnect there.

Steven Rose (2009). Darwin 200: Should scientists study race and IQ? NO: Science and society do not benefit Nature, 457 (7231), 786-788 DOI: 10.1038/457786a

Stephen Ceci, Wendy M. Williams (2009). Darwin 200: Should scientists study race and IQ? YES: The scientific truth must be pursued Nature, 457 (7231), 788-789 DOI: 10.1038/457788a

gregladen Wed, 02/18/2009 - 07:55

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A lot to cover there, but I'll try to keep it sweeter than I am:
It is, as you suggest, partly the wrong question, but I'd also like to argue for it being the right question. First though, where it goes wrong.

The biggest downfall of all of these studies is its attempt to infer of the individual what is said about the larger group. IQ testing is extremely tricky business, and messy as a jello fight. Attributing +2 or -3 points to an individual because of the larger group (male vs female, 10 vs 60, white debbie vs black debbie) is a little silly in a test that comes up +/- 10-15% from hour to hour when subjected to the same individual, nevermind using different test formats to judge what is supposedly the same attribute.

We're just not that good at judging what's going on in people's brains. It's as simple as that. However, there is possibly something to be gained from this by studying "race and gender." If certain social and or genetic markers tend to score, on the whole, plus or minus a few points then there is something to be learned from it. Is it a genetic variation? Are we testing what we think we're testing? What about these differences can we pin down, so as to narrow education formats for the better (assuming you do discover specific learning/visual/memory differences)(and I mean to individuals who score a certain way, not just lumping individuals by their group, which would miss the trees for the forest).

At this point we mostly need to start over on just what it is we study in relation to both 'IQ' and 'race.' IQ because after years of study on the matter, it's become apparent to me that we really don't have a clue what we're measuring, or worse we realize it isn't what we think it is but continue to use it to pass judgment on individuals. Race, because much of the "research" (if it can be called that) tends to be looking for exactly what it expects to find. Not so smart from a scientific establishment.

Clear analysis. I like the rat test. If you can't check it out on rats first, then you'd better check if your categories are real.

Ok, I'll bite. What's culling? The only meaning of this term I'm aware of is deliberate reduction in a species population. Google didn't find any other definitions aside from something to do with computer graphics.

Speeking of race, thought this might interest you: "

An uproar is brewing about an editorial cartoon in today's New York Post that appears to tie President Obama to a rampaging chimpanzee killed by police..."

Jackel: On my way to check that out.

Josh: Culling is the process by which the mammalian brain goes from being a useless wadge of neural tissue to being a thinking organ. Differences in brains once they are formed up and ready to go are primarily differences in culling processes, which are not under genetic control at any detailed level.

I've only recently started following your blog, and I find this post very disappointing. You seem to be falling into the same trap that most leftist "scientists" do, listing a whole bunch of things that might or might not be relevant to the question at hand in an attempt to distract from the question. (I hope I'm mistaken...)

The most important point is that our society is geared to respond to the individual, while these studies have to do with the statistical makeup of the group. Any inclination to hold an individual responsible for the characteristics of any group he/she is a member of is immoral and un-American. When we remember this, there's no reason not to study those statistics.

Gender can be precisely defined for 99.9% of the human race (heh!) on chromosomal grounds. If studies regarding gender need to be separated from issues regarding abnormal development, this can probably be done by excluding the exceptional cases. Whether or not women are "smarter" than men on average, we all know there are female and male geniuses, female and male morons, and mostly females and males somewhere in-between. When people react to the individual, there is no harm in scientific studies regarding group statistics.

Race is much more serious. I've just finished
The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending, and I am surprised how much more carefully they define their "racial" groups than most people who argue the question. They make clear caveats regarding lack of gene-flow in defining any group that will undergo independent selective breeding. The poster-child for this, of course, is the Ashkenazi intelligence issue, in which they repeatedly demonstrate by means of well-documented evidence, the extremely low rate of gene-flow into the pool during the middle-ages, and the social conditions that arguably provided the selective advantage for superior mathematical abilities. (All this completely contrary to the Wiki article I linked, which is typical of the unscientific dialectic used by the left.)

The current popular definition of "race" rightly deserves to be consigned to the trash-bin, along with those bigots who use it to influence decisions that ought to be applied only to individuals. As for the oft-raised issue of "developmental influences", when dealing with individuals I see no reason to involve them, any more than "race" or gender. Our civilization is full of jobs that need to be done correctly, and its survival depends on selecting individuals who can do them, whether they are Ashkenazi Jews raised in the suburbs or mixed "race" children of the inner cities.

bad cartoon. very bad.

Next up in Nature: "Who has more Chi? Vampires vs werewolves."

Greg,

I have two questions:

1. Even if we grant you that biological race doesn't exist, isn't exploration of the IQ differences between socially constructed groups an important avenue of scientific research, so as to understand why they have divergent economic/educational outcomes?

2. You disagree with using "race" as a population genetics category. When speaking of groups in the context of population genetics, what would you suggest as the criteria/terminology for grouping?

Just a quick note re culling: I can't find any evidence that neuronal culling is widely considered important in differences between brains. My own reading suggest to me that the specific development of synaptic locations on dendrites, which is under genetic control, has much more to do with differences in the thinking process.

If you are including target-dependent neuronal death in culling, I would dispute that this process has much impact. It seems to be mainly based on the neurons starting out as a sort of "scatter-shot" to be sure of hitting their targets by hitting everything nearby, followed by apoptosis of cells that don't hit their target.

Ah, that was actually something I was familiar with but apparently didn't remember the term.

"Culling" is an example of a somatic selection process, which is also a feature of the adaptive immune response. One evolutionary trend in vertebrates is flexible developmental systems that adapt to a variety of environmental conditions.

AK said :"You seem to be falling into the same trap that most leftist "scientists" do...

You seem to be falling into the same trap that most Coulterite rightwingers do of surrounding with scare quotes terms with which you disagree rather than doing the legwork of providing a refutation. Just what are you saying here, that Greg isn't really a scientist? If so, have the balls to say so clearly, complete with your supporting evidence. If not, then knock it off, it makes you look intellectually dishonest.

1. Even if we grant you that biological race doesn't exist, isn't exploration of the IQ differences between socially constructed groups an important avenue of scientific research, so as to understand why they have divergent economic/educational outcomes?

I believe that history is better suited to answer your question than biology is.

Ben, I don't think the scientific study of anything whereby the treatment groups are made up bullshit benefits anyone. But yes, understanding how IQ operates in this crazy mixed up world of ours is a valid pursuit. That is not what is in debate here, however. As for population genetics, the proper approach with respect to understanding empirical data is probably to talk about what the data actually are ... samples.

AK: You are correct that the detailed differences between people's brains at the finer level than culling is probably more important with respect to inter-indidual differences, but these differences are distal to the genetic side of th story even more than culling is.

Science Avenger: Thank you for covering that.

Science Avenger:

Just what are you saying here, that Greg isn't really a scientist? If so, have the balls to say so clearly, complete with your supporting evidence. If not, then knock it off, it makes you look intellectually dishonest.

I'm not saying Greg isn't really a scientist. However, I've read work of many people with PhD's after their names who use dialectic to push a "politically correct" position rather than examining the evidence and the research that got that evidence. Such people are acting as Lysenkoists rather than scientists. As such, they deserve the quotes.

In reading this article, I'm surprised at the tone, which comes close to that of, for instance, the Wiki article I linked above. Whoever wrote that article has a clear bias, although they may be correct regarding the generally negative response the idea has received from the scientific community.

Comparing what I read in this post of Greg's with what I just finished reading in The 10,000 explosion, I find this post very short on detailed evidence for its conclusions. Consider:

So if you have a handful of alleles that make you seem to be a Native American, for instance, some professor of higher education may look at you and think "Oh, another one of these guys. Last Native American I had to deal with .... well that didn't go so well. Let's get rid of this guy."

That was the expression of a genetic trait possessed by the victim of a racist act. The genotype was the set of alleles that code for Native Americanosity, and the trait, in its fully expressed glory, was a racist act that emerged from the social context. [&following]

In The 10,000 explosion, OTOH, I find a good part of a chapter devoted to explaining how a holistic (my term) examination of a persons DNA can place their ancestry within even the vague "racial" groupings we commonly think of. To claim that because a handful of bigots will judge people on a few visible characteristics that there is something wrong with the scientific examination of population groupings (including their statistical distribution of intelligence or other characteristics) is, IMO completely unscientific. Those who use empty dialectic trying to shut off scientific inquiry are, at best, "scientists".

As for races as "social constructs", a social construct that lasts for most of a millenium, and puts sharp limits on genetic inflow, could very well produce some amount of statistical difference in characteristics. Moreover, proper scientific examination of the whole genomes of members of this "social construct" will likely be able to tell just how much inflow there was.

Greg:

Last time I checked there was no evidence of that. Certainly which populations of pyramidal cells in, say, the cerebral cortex establish synaptic connections with which incoming axon populations is under genetic control. The precise way in which receptor populations are expressed in and around any synapse is certainly very plastic and adaptive to conditions, but that very plasticity is genetically determined. The key question is whether there are differences among humans regarding that genetic determination, or just between humans and relatives.

I think that Spiv and AK made a great point that I couldn't articulate until now. The statistical variation between groups is not likely to be significant compared to variation within those groups. So for example, if an IQ study is done to determine which children need the most help in the classroom, race and gender would only play a small part. It would be much more useful to determine that individually.

It may be useful on a larger scale, such as providing extra funding to certain schools, but again there are better ways to determine this. As far as I know, there is a bigger correlation between poverty and educational achievement than between race and educational achievement, for example. Schools are also scored individually to get a direct measure of how much help each school needs. It's just not very useful to tease out minor statistical differences between groups when other factors play a much bigger part.

Also, I did not realize that boys' IQ scores are adjusted to match girls. I've never taken and 'official' IQ test, but the ones I have taken for fun online or in books never asked about gender.

catgirl: Yes, they are often gender adjusted. All IQ scores are always adjusted for something.

AK: Read this:

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/race_and_racism/

then come back and tell me what I'm missing in what I 'say' ... I'm sure i"m missing something, lots even, but you would be on thin ice to judge that on the basis of a blog post, eh?

cheers.

In fact, Greg has it backwards. To the extent that male and female IQ means differ, males are higher but the difference is no more than a point or so on either side of the mean. That is, with a large sample normalized to 100, the mean for women will fall around 99+ and that of men around 101-.

The huge difference between male and female IQs is the large difference between them in standard deviation. That is, as you depart from the mean in either direction by 3, 4, 5, or more sigmas, women are more and more underrepresented. I don't have the exact numbers at hand, but at +4 sigmas (generally considered genius range) IIRC men outnumber women about 10:1, and the disparity continues to increase the further out you go. Of course, that means there are also a lot more truly stupid men.

"In reading this article, I'm surprised at the tone, which comes close to that of, for instance, the Wiki article I linked above. Whoever wrote that article has a clear bias, although they may be correct regarding the generally negative response the idea has received from the scientific community."

Is AK suggesting that is bad for somebody to express a biased account of things *in a blog* ? That sounds like the best place to do it. Blogs aren't textbooks.

To completely ignore most of the posts and put forward my own opinion (:P), I think research into genetics and IQ would be interesting, but research into race and IQ seems pointless without a clear scientific objective breakdown of race. It's pretty clear that "races" like "black" or "asian" actually constitute very broad groups of people, and what about "Australian", "Jewish" or "Muslim?" Probably most people wouldn't call these races, but then what's the difference between "Asian" and "Australian?" - Aren't Asians just people who live or come from Asia, and Australians are people who live or come from Australia. Are Indians "Asians?" What about Mongols or Indonesians?

Race is essentially a meaningless distinction so it seems difficult to come up with meaningful research into the relationship with IQ when you have subjective classifications that don't really represent material differences.

I think that IQ might be one area where the "races" are applicable since for a lot of history race has had a significant impact on your labour prospects and social settings. For instance the claim I've heard is that Jewish people could have higher IQs since they spent so much time in Europe trying to avoid persecution and being forced into intellectual professions. I don't actually believe those arguments but I do think the question could have scientific merit since there is reason to believe that selective pressure was applied on a racial bias. Of course whether we should study is another question as even discounting the obvious difficulties it's an extremely sticky issue.

@greg

You really think the cartoon is that bad? My thought was "oops, that's a snafu" but I find the concept that there was a racist intent to the cartoon ridiculous. Uproars like that very much give me the impression that someone is trying way too hard to be offended.

Greg, your discussion of gender might be clearer if you adopt the terminology generally used by "gender studies" whereby sex = biological category (sperm vs. egg, XY vs XX) and gender = socially constructed category (pants vs. skirts, trucks vs. dolls).

While you can't assume everyone else is using the terms to make the same distinction, the separate terminology helps for exactly the sort of things you're discussing here.

In light of all the recent noise on these issues, I'm thinking discussions of race need similar divides in terminology: phenotype vs. ancestral geography vs. social category.

white heteronormative privilege! as i already state on daniel macarthur's blog the very mooting of this topic creates a hostile and chilling environment for people of color. my voice is implicitly silenced when a 'hypothesis' is mulled which might deny equality of value to all peoples, regardless of color or creed. hate hypothesis is not valid hypothesis.

Ben, I don't think the scientific study of anything whereby the treatment groups are made up bullshit benefits anyone.

Greg, you think that racial groups "are made up bullshit", correct?

Doesn't it follow from your above quote, then, that you don't think we should scientifically study why blacks do worse than whites educationally and economically on average?

As for population genetics, the proper approach with respect to understanding empirical data is probably to talk about what the data actually are ... samples.

Are you against attempts to summarize group-based genetic variation within the species using methods like principle component maps, clustering, etc? If so, why? If not, would you agree that study of the principal components or clusters that emerge are essential to understanding human genetic variation?

Ooh, Greg, razib is cute! Can I keep him?

Ooh, Greg, razib is cute! Can I keep him?

oh, you think it is amusing to pretend that you can possess a marginalized person of color? you flaunt your privilege with utter insensitivity, i happen to be a person of postcolonial identity whose ancestors were oppressed by white men.

You're welcome, Razib.

your trivialization of injustice is offensive.

Spaulding, I'm hip on the terminology. I was talking about gender.

Aaron Luchko: the African = Subhuman = Ape = been doing that for two hundred year, yes, this cartoonist made an explicit and very negative racist statement with this cartoon. I'd like to hear his explanation, but .. really.

Ben, the problem is that you are fetishizing groups. Get over the groups.

Razib, you post colonial jokin'man you. Great to see you stop by.

dr. laden, oppression is no joke.

You are absolutely correct, Razib.

Dr. Razib

ah, i address you by your surname, and you respond in a manner intended to diminish. why don't you just call me "boy"?

Again, you are correct and I am an imbecile. I hope the honorable Dr. Kahn can forgive me just a little.

@greg
"Aaron Luchko: the African = Subhuman = Ape = been doing that for two hundred year, yes, this cartoonist made an explicit and very negative racist statement with this cartoon. I'd like to hear his explanation, but .. really."

I can't imagine for a second that African = Subhuman = Ape crossed the mind of the cartoonist for a second. If it hand the cartoonist immediately would have explained "Oh s***!!" and thrown the drawing in the trash. I can't see the necessary combination of ignorance and racism existing in a cartoonist for a major newspaper for them to author that cartoon knowing that connotation.

Consider the alternate explanation that the cartoon is referring to one of the multiple legislators or senators that have been writing the bill as monkeys (ie million monkeys at typewriters).

Yes the cartoonist or editor should have had that light bulb go on and realize the alternate meaning behind the cartoon, but to assume deliberate attempt is drawing a very serious conclusion with very tenuous evidence.

Aaron, you may be right. But cartoonists probably study cartoons. If he has a BA at any reasonable college he has been exposed to this. It is just difficult to imagine otherwise. But it could be.

We await word from the front on this one.

Razib,

As a person of post-colonial identity, whose ancestors were oppressed by white men, I find that your argument that people should not be allowed to discuss whether or not they should be allowed to ask certain questions creates a hostile and chilling environment.

You claim that your voice is implicitly silenced, yet you advocate explicitly silencing other voices.

Greg, instead of assuming my motives, can you answer my question? Should the causes of the differences in educational and economic outcomes between blacks and whites (and other groups) be studied scientifically?

ben, I answered your question above.

That races are real was proven by Linnaeus. That races are different was proven by Darwin. That they vary in intelligence was proven by Fisher. That these differences matter to society was proven by Bell Curve. Why are you still asking these questions?

Bob, you are a little out dated.

You claim that your voice is implicitly silenced, yet you advocate explicitly silencing other voices.

hate speech is not speech at all, but violence. i do not ask that voices be silenced, i ask that humanity and dignity be respected.

I find that your argument that people should not be allowed to discuss whether or not they should be allowed to ask certain questions creates a hostile and chilling environment.

trivialization of the experience of the other is the first and foremost of the tools with which the master builds his house. people are color become trapped in the master's cartesian abstractions, sprung forth from the eurocentric milieu and demanded to be take as a priori truths which all must bend the knee.

ok, well, that's our core disagreement then. you think we shouldn't do any scientific research on why the races (socially constructed or not) have unequal economic/education outcomes, and i do.

@razib

I worry that your approach can leads to a hostile atmosphere that stops people from investigating the causes of inequality, without knowing the causes I think finding solutions is extremely difficult.

On a side note I have to say I find your comments a bit hard to parse. You have a tendency to use a lot of big words and rhetorical flourishes that can make it quite hard to understand what you're actually saying.

without knowing the causes I think finding solutions is extremely difficult.

another eurocentric trope, gnÅthi seauton. and always the process through which said illumination shall occur will be western science, the master's tool par excellence! the need for solutions, the method which those solutions require, are presupposed on a normative framework laden with heteronormative white male presuppositions. rather that know thyself, might i ask interrogate thyself!

You have a tendency to use a lot of big words and rhetorical flourishes that can make it quite hard to understand what you're actually saying.

economy of prose is certainly one value that could be emphasized. but i believe that a true multicultural frame requires an acknowledge that other weights besides clarity, precision and relational integrity are necessary, rhetorical flourish, showmanship and elan. these are the hallmarks of many world cultures, and the post-cartesian paradigm in the west had derided and trivialized these counter-narratives.

He also notes that while people may bellyache about adjusting IQ scores across 'racial' groups, no one seems to complain about nor notice the adjustment of IQ scores between gender, whereby boy's scores are raised to make them seem equal to girls. Who are smarter, obviously.

Citation? That would be a really useful club for certain particularly recalcitrant chauvinists...

That races are real was proven by Linnaeus. That races are different was proven by Darwin. That they vary in intelligence was proven by Fisher. That these differences matter to society was proven by Bell Curve. Why are you still asking these questions?

Leaving aside the various inaccuracies of your quote, then the answer is "Because we're interested in finding the questions that are actually meaningful and answering them accurately, not in combing the beach of research for dead wood that we can use to prop up our pre-existing biases."

Greg" The genotype was the set of alleles that code for Native Americanosity, and the trait, in its fully expressed glory, was a racist act that emerged from the social context."
Don't forget the social construct and coding of the prof who might well be reacting to the social construct of "white prof presumed (in the construct)as racist" and the racist trait could easily haave been from ' the last native student' exprience where the prof was presumed racist because of skin color...

and:"you don't inherit your gender, exactly" no, but every womens studies fostered kid whose anti-male or gay mommy dearest cultured a presumptuous and gender focused--and anti-male viewpoint in the kid surely formed a confused/confusing construct

AK: Oh shit--an argument from the lands of Gog and Magog...de facto pro bono defense of inbreeding as a cure for low intelligence scores on western models of IQ...you almost have me convinced that kidnapping white female slaves from slavic hinterlands is the answer, ala Ashkenazim...http://jewishresearch.org/v2/2006/articles/growth/1_23_06.htm

Which brings m to razib, being cuckolded, mothered and 'othered' by the white woman Stephanie....

Greg, I think the commenter pool needs a little chlorine...

aha! I figured it out: razib is acting as the pseudo authority--a British trained post colonialist "local agent"--an erudite Apu from within the "formidable scholarly corpus" of the "oriental professorate"...damn those cultural capitalists!

AZKKKyroth, were you peeing in the pool again?

or are you once again prescribing skin bleach?

Azkryoth: Citation? That would be a really useful club for certain particularly recalcitrant chauvinists...

??? This post is about two papers, cited there in, and my sentence is about something that is said in one of them. So see below (above)... ???

BTW, IQ test are generally adjusted for urban'rual, region, gender, age of testees, and so on and so forth. The mean value of all IQ tests is 100. Because they are all adjusted. There is no ideal IQ test that can measure "IQ" The assumption is that in a laregish sample the mean is 100.

Is one of the cited papers the source for the observation that boys' IQ scores are adjusted to make them equal to girls'? Or am I misreading?

Robert Bruce Thompson: you're mostly correct, but it varies between test types. The view of psych is basically that some questions/problems are 'culture centric,' without being specifically aware of it. For instance showing a partial happy face (cultural icon) to someone who's never seen such a thing and asking them what's missing will ultimately result in an answer different from someone who's lived with the icon all their lives. As such, the tests are adjusted (some + a couple points, some - a couple for a particular group or groups) to try and make up for the errors of the test itself. This does put some presumption of True Equality, which most likely isn't quite correct, but darned if we have a good way of finding out just who's more equal than the other. It's kind of a crappy default position, but an affective one.

Same answer for Azkryoth.

If you really want to bother yourself, look up the Flynn Effect. Are we getting smarter? Or better at taking tests? Or have more advanced knowledge of the contents of them? Basically, is it real or not? It's the same question to be asking across score adjustments of any kind.

Azkryoth: yes. And Bob, as with all of these data, it depends on the data you look at, which is a big part of the point being made by Rose. Given the large differences in scores for males vs. females in special intelligence tests, it is clearly true that a seemingly valid IQ test can be designee to advantage one sex over the other. Thus the scores are normalized by sex.

Let me point this out so we are all on the same page. All these tests are normalized. They have to be. There is no a priori method of assaying IQ in a manner such that the raw numerical results have much meaning. You need to provide a test to a population that is designed to test this measure, and that is also designed so that most people will get a fair number of answers wrong. And the population has to be big enough. Once you've done that, raw scores are normalized so that the average = 100.

@Greg:

Having read the first page of posts in your link, I certainly agree with your comments regarding "race" as a current social construct, and attempts to study correlations with intelligence, etc. Actually, such studies might have value as applied to the tendency of people to conform to expectations, but that subject is of little interest to me so I won't pursue it.

Far more important, in my view, is the fact that for a long time the human species was well divided into sub-species, analogous to sub-species in other species. True, there probably wasn't total isolation, but there was enough that the general genetic makeup of each subspecies was and remains recognizable to proper holistic genetic examination. Remnants of those differences can still be found in modern populations.

There is extremely good evidence that these different sub-species were subject to different selective pressures, and even when there were similar pressures, sometimes the problems were solved independently with different mutations. For example, malaria resistance and lactose tolerance. The question is whether those different pressures led to different distributions of genetic bases of intelligence.

I'll admit the risk that any scientific studies of "race" will be twisted to the use of intolerant bigots, but this, IMO, should not be allowed to influence scientific research.

Finally, I'm less interested in issues of "race" than your opinions regarding the genetic basis of intelligence, however defined. I got the vague impression that you are hostile to the notion that differences in I.Q., or other discrete measures of intelligence, could be partly the result of genetic differences. Is this true, or am I being over-sensitive?

@Jeremy:

Is AK suggesting that is bad for somebody to express a biased account of things *in a blog* ? That sounds like the best place to do it. Blogs aren't textbooks.

Not bad, just disappointing to me. (In any case, I'm thinking I was over-sensitive.) There are plenty of blogs that are routinely biased in the fashion I mentioned, I just don't go there. I was just hoping this wasn't one of them.

@the real m:

de facto pro bono defense of inbreeding as a cure for low intelligence scores on western models of IQ...you almost have me convinced that kidnapping white female slaves from slavic hinterlands is the answer, ala Ashkenazim

Not "inbreeding" but "inbreeding and culling", a standard technique used by breeders to concentrate a characteristic. Done too fast, it reduces genetic diversity and concentrates lethal recessives, but if done at an appropriate rate it works fine with dogs, horses, cattle, and, presumably, humans.

Should the causes of the differences in educational and economic outcomes between blacks and whites (and other groups) be studied scientifically?

They have been studied and there are many contributing factors, such as poverty, health and nutrition, and personal and social biases.

AK: the point is that yes, there are almost certainly differences between various genetic groups (and likely gender groups), but the tests are simply not smart enough to insure an actual result rather than a testing bias. IMO all IQ tests suffer from the same problem: they are either created by, or created through the heritage of, a bunch of gray old white male academics.

The result of this is almost definitely that what we're testing is our ability to become gray old white male academics, with adjustments to help counteract this effect. It's a question of audience too; just what are we trying to accomplish from IQ testing?

Is it identifying potential for some type of greatness? (academic? spacial? abstract? creativity? pattern recognition? One of the other 40 some odd 'types' of intelligence we think we know something about? What about things like synaesthetics? coordination? Adaptability? something else I know nothing of at all?)

Is it to identify learning types, and improve educational formats? If so, we're really, really sucking at this so far.

Truth is, until we come up with some brilliant way of measuring a very raw form of intelligence, we're beating around the bush and picking out "things" we want to measure. These "things" are going to do a much better job of telling us about what our cultural values than they are about the capacity of the individuals being subjected to them.

@razib

I consider myself to have well above average reading comprehension and I can't be bothered to figure out half of what you're writing.

Writing like that does not help your argument. If anything it gives the impression that you're deliberately writing obtusely in order to confuse the reader and sound more intelligent than them. I'm not saying this is what you're doing but it writing like that definitely gives off that vibe. It doesn't make people listen to you more, it makes people feel offended that you're trying to insult their intelligence and think you're insecure for resorting to tricks like that.

Either that or you're just screwing around with everybody which is a possibility I can't discount.

They have been studied and there are many contributing factors, such as poverty, health and nutrition, and personal and social biases.

They are still being studied. And genetics should be on the table (and, in many cases is) because there are genetic differences between these groups.

@Spiv:

That may be, if you're looking for a functional value in "I.Q." testing. However, any test that measures abilities that require (or are aided by) abstract reasoning may be correlated against genetic profiles, with possible valuable information. It doesn't really matter if the current I.Q. tests are culturally biased, as long as you keep in mind that the genetic correlations are with a culturally biased test.

IMO what would be best is a large battery of different test, applied to a number of subjects with different profiles, with large-scale statistical analysis of the results.

The value would be almost entirely genetic: hopefully a better understanding of the relationship between certain genes (alleles actually) and various types of cerebral performance.

I don't see any real evidence for this other than the useful and interesting but very different situation of a broken system. For instance, what genes determine if a person is a good runner. Well, a genetic mutation that causes a person to be born without femurs *might* be a clue for a gene that *might* be involved in running, or it might be just a badly messed up system. Similarly, genes that, when mutated in certain ways, mess up one or another brain function *might* be involved in "intelligence" one way or another. Or maybe not. Finding a gene that when broken produces certain results does not tell us that we have a gene for which there is actual allelic variation which, in turn, affects variation in intelligence across people.

I reiterate the point I make above. For the most part, people at both extreme ends of the presumed causal spectrum ... genetics folks one one end and ed/psych folk on the other ... tend to be impressed with a gene->intelligence causal link. But in between we have the neurobiologists and they are by and large not impressed.

ben g: these groups. What groups?

AK: a large battery of tests is simply more data on the same subject if all of them are measuring American academic life, which is basically the case whether you're taking the WAIS, SB, mega, or whatever. It's all different test measuring, more or less, the same handful of traits that we as a culture have deemed 'valuable.' In other words more tests is really the same test, with more questions.

As of yet I haven't been asked to play a drum or coordinate a ballet maneuver during the course of an IQ test. I suspect that sort of thing would be a start, but not one we're likely to see. The people designing the tests tend to see their bodies as a cart for their brains.

The alternative you alluded to; take a measurement of a single aspect as we know it, try to subtract for the basic culture screw ups,then see what we have left for the genetic discrepancies. This is pretty much what we do to come to the conclusions of things like "women are better at multitasking." The error comes immediately after, as always, that because I'm a man, I must be worse at multitasking than the women around me. Which in this case is likely true, but a terrible assumption to make. Plus, the whole process of removing various biases is a messy one, but not impossible if the data gets rich enough in time.

It doesn't really matter if the current I.Q. tests are culturally biased, as long as you keep in mind that the genetic correlations are with a culturally biased test.

If you want to diagnose 'intelligence' (variation in) why not start with the factors that most directly cause or shape all that is known and all that is done by the human brain? Which would be lived experience. Let's see if lived experience can explain even a little of the variation between people first.

OMG, we've totally done that already. Lived experience does in fact explain a certain percentage of these variations!

Really, no kidding? How much, how much???

Like so much of it that we are probably done explaining it!

groups that have significantly below average outcomes educationally and economically. e.g african-americans.

ben g: Demonstrate the validity/reality/existence of the group. Your science is no good if you cannot describe the sampling units rigorously. You've not done that yet.

Greg,

What do you mean by "existence of the group"? This is a sincere question.

If we're studying why people socially recognized as "black" or "white" differ in various outcomes we could ask for self-reports.

Ben, start with where they're socially recognized and by whom. This is nothing like consistent.

@Spiv:

I'm talking about tests including "to play a drum or coordinate a ballet maneuver". Also discrete musical talents such as composing on paper, sight reading, jamming, etc. Also real-time solution of tactical problems, resolving scenes from backgrounds, performance at non-zero-sum games; basically everything.

If you look into the types of tests neurologists have been using in studying the brain, you'll find a very wide variety of interesting tests. Throw them all into the pot!

First off, I should clarify that the groups you label depend on the hypotheses you're testing. It depends on whether you're testing a hypothesis about African-Americans or about people of african ancestry, for example.

Secondly, to answer Stephanie's comment, self-reports could serve as the operational definition for being "black" or "white".

Greg, would you agree with this: "People socially recognized as 'black' or 'African-American' have lower average IQ's than those socially recognized as 'white'. Additionally, there is significant genetic variation between these two populations"?

If I may temporarily assume a racist stance for the sake of argument: that 'black' people are better at sports and 'white' people are better at written IQ tests...

At what % do the advantages/disadvantages kick in?

@ben

For the most part I do think we have distinct groups that are socially identified as white or black, and social factors (ie stereotypes) that affect most members of those groups (ie people who are told they're not smart generally perform worse on tests).

However, for another perspective I want you to consider that height is a far stronger predictor of academic achievement than colour. Short people on average have far less education than tall people, the correlation is huge.

Does this mean that if you meet two middle aged white males on the street, and one is noticeably taller than the other, that the taller one is likely better educated? Not really, children are very short and all those uneducated babies are screwing up the data.

What I'm basically getting at is that even if you do have a well defined group you're not necessarily getting out the data you want.

Did you know that the average African American high school student in Minneapolis has an IQ that is about 20 to 25 points higher than the average rural white male of similar age?

Buh, buh, but ... rural-urban is cultural not genetic!!! Totally unlike race!

(Just kidding; I understand your point, Greg, and I agree with it.)

I think it is really funny that no one is challenging this. Everybody is busy googling it.

It is accurate, though.

Should the causes of the differences in educational and economic outcomes between blacks and whites (and other groups) be studied scientifically?

They have been studied and there are many contributing factors, such as poverty, health and nutrition, and personal and social biases.

Hence, the problem with the original question is that it falls into the same category as "Should scientists explore evidence against Darwin's theory of evolution?"

razib, someone who plays a troll so well as to be functionally indistinguishable from a troll, is a troll.

At least this time you aren't making a joke of a woman's imprisonment, torture and murder.

AK: I'm all for more comprehensive tests, and in fact a lot of the neuro tests are a great start, but they tend to only be used in reference to diagnosis of a damage or disorder. Change that and we might all get to have a clue what we're talking about.

Did you know that the average African American high school student in Minneapolis has an IQ that is about 20 to 25 points higher than the average rural white male of similar age?

Reference please. This does seem to be unrealistic. 20-25 points difference where the the national sigma is 15? Let see the source first. I suspect you don't know simple math.

Why do I need a reference for this, but not one number cited above has come with a reference? First, DK, you come up with a reference for every assertion made up until my post regarding alleged differences in IQ. Then, I will give you the references for this and explain what it means.

Why do I need a reference for this

Because I asked for it. In a serious conversation, anyone making a factual claim is supposed to be prepared to support it. So you either come up with a source or you come across as a bag of hot air. Your choice.

DK: I have already explained the rules of the game. My way or the highway, baby.

I made none of the claims, so you can't ask me to provide references for them. YOU did though. So you have to. Not that I expected you to cite your source. Q.E.D. Good luck with your way of making things up.

DK - if you met the guy Greg's talking about, you'd understand.

@Greg:

I've provided reference(s) for my points (which aren't so much claims as items with enough evidence to merit further research, IMO). I would also like to see some references for the "average African American high school student in Minneapolis has an IQ that is about 20 to 25 points higher than the average rural white male of similar age" statement if true (your question doesn't technically make this claim, as I'm sure you're aware).

Personally, I find it eminently believable given drop-out rates prior to high-school in urban areas. Still, it would be nice to have something to link to using this point in other discussions.

Assertions made up thread without attribution:

Leftist scientists often fall into the trap of bringing irrelevant information into the discussion.

Gender can be precisely defined for 99.9 percent of thehuman race on chromosomal grounds.

"the specific development of synaptic locations on dendrites, which is under genetic control, has much more to do with differences in the thinking process."

"a social construct that lasts for most of a millenium, and puts sharp limits on genetic inflow, could very well produce some amount of statistical difference in characteristics. "

"The precise way in which receptor populations are expressed in and around any synapse is certainly very plastic and adaptive to conditions, but that very plasticity is genetically determined."

"males are higher but the difference is no more than a point or so on either side of the mean. That is, with a large sample normalized to 100, the mean for women will fall around 99+ and that of men around 101"

"as you depart from the mean in either direction by 3, 4, 5, or more sigmas, women are more and more underrepresented. I don't have the exact numbers"

"for a lot of history race has had a significant impact on your labour prospects and social settings. For instance the claim I've heard is that Jewish people could have higher IQs since they spent so much time in Europe trying to avoid persecution..."

and so on.

The assertion that a group of dark skinned people is smarter than a group of light skinned people suddenly demands references. Interesting. And disturbing.

My statement is accurate. I will tell you where the data come from as soon as I get references to all of the above assertions.

@Greg:

I think you should distinguish between assertions and statements of opinion, suspicions/theories/speculations, and the like. Not all of the above "assertions" are mine, however I will address each of those that are:

Leftist scientists often fall into the trap of bringing irrelevant information into the discussion.

Opinion. To the extent that it counts as an assertion, it was on my own authority preparatory to debate.

Gender can be precisely defined for 99.9 percent of thehuman race on chromosomal grounds.

See any biology textbook. O.K., I was talking about sex, which I thought you were. My further discussion certainly made that clear.

"the specific development of synaptic locations on dendrites, which is under genetic control, has much more to do with differences in the thinking process."

You left out the preceding: "My own reading suggest to me that...". This counts as a tentative opinion rather than an assertion. (Based on readings in neurology and developmental biology, e.g. see below.)

"a social construct that lasts for most of a millenium, and puts sharp limits on genetic inflow, could very well produce some amount of statistical difference in characteristics. "

The 10,000 Year Explosion, and references therein.

"The precise way in which receptor populations are expressed in and around any synapse is certainly very plastic and adaptive to conditions, but that very plasticity is genetically determined."

The Neuron Cell and Molecular Biology (Second Edition) by Levitan, Kaczmarek; Developmental Biology, Seventh Edition, by Scott F. Gilbert.

The rest are not mine, I won't take responsibility for them.

I believe your statement is accurate, but before I use it myself I would like to be able to link to references.

Close enough.

The point I'm making here, using startling facts, is that IQ values are always, always adjusted. When you make a test, you can make a test to favor or disfavor almost any possible set of test subjects. If current IQ tests have an average of X points higher for men than for women, that is because they are designed to do this. And, that information is in contrast with regular test scores, which show the average to be higher for female than male students.

I have this image in my mind of some guy in charge of the IQ tests. The testing writers keep coming up with increasingly refined drafts of the nest test battery, and running them through the evaluation procedure. Sometimes the boys do better, sometimes the girls do better, sometimes the native americans do better, sometimes the chinese americans do better, and so on and so forth. Until eventually the guy looks at it and goes "Oh, that's about right."

... but I digress ...

My data compare current IQ scores with the IQ's of the average white rural 18 year old in the first two years that IQ tests were given. In general, if you don't adjust the scores over time, the IQ of Americans in general has gone UP by about 25 or 30 points over the last 90 years.

Yet we know that Americans have not actually gotten innately smarter over that time. Certainly, unequivocally, indubitably, and undeniably, it is certain that this shift in 25 or 30 points is not genetic. Not with this population, not over this period of time.

That kind of ends the discussion of race, genetics, and IQ.

Grg: without being any more of a turd than your nemesis here, I ould like to see proof as well, re: " Did you know that the average African American high school student in Minneapolis has an IQ that is about 20 to 25 points higher than the average rural white male of similar age?"

Where did you find that?

OH, sorry, yes, I should have provided the exact reference. Best way to get at this is probably Yerkes, R.M, "A point scale for measuring mental ability" PNAS 1:114-117 (1915) or the Yerkes monograph, Report of the Psychology Committee of the National Research Council by RM Yerkes (1919) National research council. Start with those.

@Greg:

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Similarly, the fact that non-genetic factors can be shown to have an impact on intelligence, however measured, does not mean that genetic factors aren't present as well.

I did a quick search on intelligence nutrition "identical twins" and found, among others:

The heritability of intelligence in Japan

Japanese data for 543 monozygotic (MZ) twins and 134 dizygotic (DZ) twins tested for intelligence at the age of 12 give correlation coefficients of. 782 and .491, respectively, indicating a heritability of .582. Heavier twins at birth have significantly higher IQs at the age of 12, suggesting that prenatal nutrition exerts a significant effect on intelligence.

Genetics and intelligence: What's new?

Nature as well as nurture contributes to the development of individual differences in intelligence. Genetic research on intelligence has moved beyond this rudimentary nature-nurture question to make several exciting discoveries about intelligence by investigating developmental change and continuity, multivariate associations among cognitive abilities, and the developmental interface between nature and nurture. Advances in molecular genetics have led to the dawn of a new era for genetic research that makes it possible to identify specific genes responsible for genetic influence on cognitive abilities and disabilities.

Neurobiology of intelligence: science and ethics, (Full text here)

Human mental abilities, such as intelligence, are complex and profoundly important, both in a practical sense and for what they imply about the human condition. Understanding these abilities in mechanistic terms has the potential to facilitate their enhancement. There is strong evidence that the lateral prefrontal cortex, and possibly other areas, support intelligent behaviour. Variations in intelligence and brain structure are heritable, but are also influenced by factors such as education, family environment and environmental hazards. Cognitive, psychometric, genetic and neuroimaging studies are converging, and the emergence of mechanistic models of intelligence is inevitable. These exciting scientific advances encourage renewed responsiveness to the social and ethical implications of conducting such research.

Genetics of Brain Structure and Intelligence, (Full text here)

Genetic influences on brain morphology and IQ are well studied. A variety of sophisticated brain-mapping approaches relating genetic influences on brain structure and intelligence establishes a regional distribution for this relationship that is consistent with behavioral studies. We highlight those studies that illustrate the complex cortical patterns associated with measures of cognitive ability. A measure of cognitive ability, known as g, has been shown highly heritable across many studies. We argue that these genetic links are partly mediated by brain structure that is likewise under strong genetic control. Other factors, such as the environment, obviously play a role, but the predominant determinant appears to genetic.

Twinâsingleton differences in intelligence? (Full text here)

The twin method has been criticised for its alleged non-generalisability. When population parameters of intellectual abilities are estimated from a twin sample, critics point to the twinâsingleton differences in intrauterine and family environments. These differences are suggested to lead to suboptimal cognitive development in twins. Although previous studies have reported twinâsingleton differences in intelligence, these studies had two major drawbacks: they tested young twins, and twins were compared with (genetically) unrelated singletons. To test accurately whether twinâsingleton differences in intelligence exist, a group of adult twins and their non-twin siblings were administered the Dutch WAIS-III. The group was large enough to detect twinâsingleton differences of magnitudes reported in earlier investigations. The data were analysed using maximum likelihood model fitting. No evidence of differences between adult twins and their non-twin siblings on cognitive performance was found. It is concluded that twin studies provide reliable estimates of heritabilities of intellectual abilities which can be generalised to the singleton population. Twin Research (2000) 3, 83â87.

In addition, an older, unpublished (and, therefore probably not peer-reviewed) paper: Is intelligence influenced by heritability, environmental influences, or both? How is intelligence influenced by these factors?

Last word?

Did my post earlier this morning get deleted? Lost in the review queue?

AK: Sorry, I just now found and freed your post.

Of course variation IQ has a heritable component. I don't think that is an issue at all.

For instance the claim I've heard is that Jewish people could have higher IQs since they spent so much time in Europe trying to avoid persecution..."

In terms of the Ashkenazim, it seems selection for high IQ occupations was a major factor:

G. Cochran, J. Hardy, H. Harpending, Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence, Journal of Biosocial Science 38 (5), pp. 659â693 (2006).

http://homepage.mac.com/harpend/.Public/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf

Read James Flynn's comment, which utterly demolishes Steven Rose.

"Flynn: ...In Roseâs original paper [commentary], he asserts that the trait in question (intelligence) leaves aside other desirable traits and argues that the groups in question can be divided into subgroups that are more biologically coherent. He concludes that the hypothesis is not subject to scientific treatment; and therefore, no useful social policy will emerge. In his response to Ceci and Williams, he says something very different, namely, that by about 1975, it had been definitively shown that genes had no place in explaining group differences. So from that date, Jensen and everybody else had no excuse to persist.

To assert both that a hypothesis is not scientifically testable and that it has been conclusively falsified is incoherent. The only way to reconcile them is to assume that Rose does not really mean Jensen had been refuted by 1975, but is saying that by that date, it should have been clear to everyone that the question was indeed unanswerable."

http://network.nature.com/groups/naturenewsandopinion/forum/topics/3871…

This new paper may be relevant:

Genetic Covariance Structure of Reading, intelligence and Memory in Children. by van Leeuwen M, van den Berg SM, Peper JS, Hulshoff Pol HE, Boomsma DI. Behav Genet. 2009 Apr 4. [Epub ahead of print]

Referenced on Dienekes Anthropology Blog.

We are mandated- to spend tens of millions of dollars on affirmative action, further tens of millions on funding black focus groups, community groups, despite the while being told 'race doesn't exist' - (a term which only seems to come up when discussing white people, yet never seems to get a mention when dicussing other races).

If we are legally forced to not only recognise the black race, but to spend countless millions on aiding this group to better itself socially, educationally and economically, then it's nothing but bizarre that we risk condemnation as 'racists' if we even study iq differences in relation to black and other ethnic and racial groups.

No, james. You're told race is a social construction, not a genetic one, and you're called racist for continuing to insist that, no, no, there's really an inherent, underlying, meaningful difference between them and you.

***You're told race is a social construction, not a genetic one, and you're called racist for continuing to insist that, no, no, there's really an inherent, underlying, meaningful difference between them and you.

Posted by: Stephanie Z | March 2, 2010 2:03 PM***

There's an interesting comparison here to adolescence. It's a social construct, but it also has a biological component.

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/01/race-current-consensus.php

This has been touched on above, but surely the obvious problem with measuring IQ across groups, however you define these groups, is more with the definition of IQ equalling intelligence.

IQ testing is inherently flawed and measures one set of skills. This set of skills is undoubtedly of value in a given setting, but if you move into a new setting, are the same skills relevant? I think this may be what our terribly angry commenter above may have been getting at:

For example, within this group, this comment thread, clarity of language is highly valued, and the commenter above notes that that is fine, but that does not devalue flowery rhetorical skills in other settings.

Really, the hallmark of human intelligence is less can you fit this shape with the others, and more how well do you adapt to your environment.

We ought to have learned this from the people with calipers who "proved" that Africans were inferior and apelike. How ridiculous! What you'll get into with measuring IQ across races, given that the IQ testing was designed by white men for white men to measure scores across skills that white men value.... well, people who are defined one way or another as "other" will in general score less well because they have different values, different experiences, different training, and will be much better at different things.

Or another way to put it might be, watch "The Gods Must be Crazy," and realise that western cultural values might not be so clever in a different environment.

I find it sad that Steph Z and others follow the mainstream line (Lewontin's fallacy really casts a long shadow). People talk of diversity, yet deny the true beauty and diversity of humanity, different races, cultures and yes, race....
Just as all dogs are descended from wolves, so humans are from African ancestors. Like dogs, we are all developed as ethnic and yes, racial groups into a myriad of expressions of humanity, all beautiful in their own way.
I guess as there's less genetic difference (using our old friend Lewontin's fallacy and ignoring modern cluster analysis)between a pitbull and a chihuahua, and, as they, like us, come from the same ancestral line,that dog breeds don't exist...
Very sad indeed, but I guess in a world moving towards globalisation, a Mcdonalds on every country and increasingly identikit nations states, that the 'there's no race we're all the same' nonsense is economically beneficial to our transnational corporations, and so governments. Therefore, academia will remain filled by those who sing the same tired old tune.

Cue an endless response of pop-scientist quotes from Dawkins, Jared Diamond and smug recitations of Flynn's effect theorem.

Sad.

Incidentally, if 'race is a social construct', then the fact means there is much less genetic distance between men and women, then gender must be a social construct as well??

I guess it's racist to even buy a woman's magazine then, or join a men's social club.

James, you've done a pretty piss poor job of critique proofing your comment, by merely calling any critique of what you've said "sad."

I probably agree in part with some of what you are saying, but I would not assume your argument is anything other than a wedge. But putting that aside for a moment, I'll just point out that the genetic and breeding history of dogs is very different from that of humans, and when dogs are left to their own (as humans generally are) you get something much more like you get with humans. Lots and lots of mutts with the occassinal odd nail sticking up.

Your dog example just does not work.

Greg, thanks for the plaudits and thanks for the criticism, though neither bother me one way or another - your opinion on my opinion means zero to me.
If the dog/ human analogy doesn't work then what does?? Dogs share the same ancestral genetic thread, as do humans (not the same one -no human is descended from a wolf!! except maybe the grisly looking guy I saw in my gym last week!)

Both, if you discount Lewontin's fallacy (and if you DON'T discount that then I hope you're enojoying the 'Flat Earth Society videos you watch on your betamax! x) then it's the elephant in the room. Genetic difference is similar.
The history of dogs and humans, which you smugly, and I would guess disingeniously, sugges is 'completely different', is actually not. Like Jared Diamond, I think you know this (Jared states race doesn't exist, except when he writes obscure essays for Jewish publications).

Same genetic history (shared ancestors), same prevalent admixture - but minimal in the wider scheme of things. Similar genetic distancing ( ok, not if you watch betamax Lewontin lectures- if you do, can I borrow them-haha, yeah right).

Same.....similarities but differences too. All dogs share character traits but some herd sheep better than others. Some fight better than other. Some run better than others...
I recall a hilarious tale of a politically correct 'breeds don't exist- they're social constructs' exponent who ostracised a friend who studied canine breed intelligence and found that, of dozens of breeds, the Afghan hound was least intelligent. The 'breeds don't exist' guys (who probably wants to borrow those betamax tapes of yours) owned an afghan hound. hahahaha. it's a true story- post a predictably smug reply and I'll return a link for you, betamax baby!

I've been reading through this blog and it has been interesting. I just have a few comments to make regarding the blog. One is about IQ tests are just something that is important to "old white men" in academia. This may be so, but it is because it has something to do with a person's academic talent, so it relates to the probability of their doing well in higher education, particularly at the graduate degree level. Mathematical IQ certainly would have a bearing on a person's performance in the science and math areas even in undergraduate work. So this type of IQ test is not irrelevant, but it is limited. There should be many more types of tests to measure how well people funcetion in different areas, if you really want to measure other equally important areas for success in the job market or even success in life. I have a feeling that Social IQ would have the largest impact on a person's overall success in life and also professionally. To get an accurate test of Social IQ would be much more difficult than getting accurate results on the things that a standard IQ test measures, because it is such a culture bound thing. A person from one culture taking a social IQ test that uses the norms of another culture would automatically disavantage someone from another culture. If the culture was radically different and the person taking the test had little exposure to the culture which judged the right and wrong answers could make someone who was highly skilled socially withing their own culture appear to have a very low social IQ. As far as the regular IQ tests being culture bound they are much more generic and it is the culture which a person wanting a higher education in this country has to deal with so we might as well accept the tests as valid, while realizing the limitation on what they actually predict.

I've been reading through this blog and it has been interesting. I just have a few comments to make regarding the blog. One is about IQ tests are just something that is important to "old white men" in academia. This may be so, but it is because it has something to do with a person's academic talent, so it relates to the probability of their doing well in higher education, particularly at the graduate degree level. Mathematical IQ certainly would have a bearing on a person's performance in the science and math areas even in undergraduate work. So this type of IQ test is not irrelevant, but it is limited. There should be many more types of tests to measure how well people function in different areas, if you really want to measure other equally important areas for success in the job market or even success in life. I have a feeling that Social IQ would have the largest impact on a person's overall success in life and also professionally. To get an accurate test of Social IQ would be much more difficult than getting accurate results on the things that a standard IQ test measures, because Social IQ is such a culture bound thing. A person from one culture taking a social IQ test that uses the norms of another culture would automatically disavantage someone from another culture. If the culture was radically different and the person taking the test had little exposure to the culture which judged the right and wrong answers the results could make someone who was highly skilled socially within their own culture appear to have a very low social IQ. As far as the regular IQ tests being culture bound they are much more generic and it is the culture in which a person wanting a higher education in this country has to deal with so we might as well accept the tests as valid, while realizing the limitation on what they actually predict.

In addition, whether or not race is a social construct or not it is not fair to give special privileges to individuals who may belong to groups that statistically don't do as well on these tests, because that penalizes individuals belonging to groups that statistically do better on these tests, even though any individual member of that group may or may not have enjoyed any privilege that are being attributed to belonging to a group which has a higher mean IQ (or better college entrance test scores, ect). My own personal feeling is that IQ is a combination of nature and nurture, but that is not really relevant when judging test results.

Snow, Loons, Eagles, Otters bloody with fish

gregladen — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 10:08:35 +0000

Snow, Loons, Eagles, Otters bloody with fish

The lake is icy-green and in the distance almost blends into the sky through a fast moving fog bank. The bald eagles (a pair and one offspring) are up to something in the back, one of them making swings over the bay and then back into the yard where they are vocalizing quite a bit. The pair of loons that always nests on the point a few hundred meters across the bay have changed to their winter plumage and are actively feeding just outside the cabin, and have been for two days. This year, they did not successfully raise an offspring, which is unusual. so we didn't get to see the cute baby loon riding around on the back of mom-dad. The bird expert I spoke to about this suggests lead poisoning as the most likely cause. I suspect that having your nest 150 yards northeast of a pair of eagles raising an offspring and 100 yards east of a barred owl nest could also have an impact.

Suddenly, the fog bank closes in and it turns out that it isn't fog at all. Welcome to our first winter storm! And in the snow we can now see a pair of otters fishing not far from the loons; One of them gets a pretty big fish and seems determined to bring its livid bloodied body to shore for some reason. Whenever otters do something strange, we assume they are playing, but more likely there is some competition going on here. Into the marsh goes the otter. I suspect he's got a girlfriend in there somewhere.

All of this is happening as I am googling to find out when these loony loons are supposed to migrate south. Turns out it varies, maybe November. In the process of looking this up, I found a site you will not want to miss. This is the product of a series of studies of loon migration, looking at Adirondack loons ... which are, by the way, the loons I grew up with ... and the site uses outstanding animations. This is a USGS site, and you can click here to visit.

The snow is turning to rain. There will be no yard work today.

gregladen Sun, 10/26/2008 - 06:08

Tags

Aves (birds)

Minnesota

Nature-Nurture

Notes from the North Country

Those three migrations are all closer to east than to south.

Right. Loons basically migrate to and from the ocean.

Our Minnesota loons are the smartest! Straight to Florida!

Right. These birds are only called 'loons' because the first ones seen by Europeans were the loony ones out east. Otherwise they'd be called something else ....

"Sanes"?

Study Suggests Increased Rate of Human Adaptive Evolution

gregladen — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:00:51 +0000

Study Suggests Increased Rate of Human Adaptive Evolution

There is a new paper, just coming out in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that explores the idea that humans have undergone an increased rate of evolution over the last several tens of thousands of years.

By an increased rate of evolution, the authors mean an increased rate of adaptive change in the genome. By recent times, the authors mean various things, depending on which part of the analysis you examine, and depending on what is meant by "increased." ... In other words, the timing of an event that is not really an event (but rather a change in rate of something) is hard to specify. The time scale we are talking about here is several tens of thousands of years.

The authors accredit the major cause of the increase in rate of evolutionary change to an increase in population size during the last 50,000 years, but also point out that the biggest change in the rate of population increase would have been with the origin of agriculture subsequent to about 10,000 years ago. This partly underscores the difficulty of talking about vague (in time and space) events, but it also points out a potential problem with the analysis.

But before I delve into what I think is wrong with the analysis, let's make clear what they are saying, and point out what is probably very valid and important.

Essentially, evolutionary change, and the amount of evolutionary change that happens in a population, begins with mutation (happening at a certain rate) and continues through either random processes that cause a mutation to become more or less common over short to medium time scales. If the mutation is deleterious, it disappears quickly, and when looking at long time scales, we expect to see very few deleterious mutations that are old. If the mutation is neutral (does not have an effect one way or the other) then we expect to see the mutation become more common over time, then less common, them more common, in a kind of random walk. If there are two different forms (alleles) of a gene (the original one and a mutation) and both have the same adaptive effects (in other words, the mutation was neutral) then we expect these two alleles to increase and decrease in relation to each other randomly, and eventually, one of the mutations will accidentally bump into "zero" and disappear, leaving the other represented at 100%. Any neutral mutation that arises will by definition start off at a very low percentage, and therefore, the new mutation is usually the one that bumps into zero first, thus disappearing.

Geneticists have done a lot of work with modeling the math of change over time in frequencies of alleles that are either deleterious or neutral. The neutral part is pretty easy, because that is simple probability. The deleterious side of this is a little more difficult because "deleterious" is a quantitative and qualitative thing ... just how deleterious is a particular allele? On the other hand, it is pretty easy to insert a deleterious allele in a population of laboratory critters (bacteria, mice, etc.) and see what happens. Therefore, the statistical models that predict the behavior of deleterious mutations over time are embedded in a good sense of reality, and as a result are pretty good too.

So, when studying genetics of populations, geneticists have the ability to predict what the genetic variation should look like given the null conditions of a particular mutation rate, a particular population size and structure over time, and no positive selection. The distribution and nature ... distribution both in the genome and across a population ... of genetic variants (alleles) should look a certain way, and when they don't, you are probably looking at postitive (adaptive) selection.

I will leave it to others who know more about the statistics of population genetics than I do to evaluate the research presented in this paper. Here, in fact, I will rely on the authority of some pretty bad-ass population geneticist and evolutionary scientists who wrote the paper. Nonetheless, I eagerly await a critical analysis by my colleagues.

Going on the assumption that this research is OK, or at least, if flawed, not utterly wrong, there are two conclusions of special interest. One of these conclusions supports ideas that have already been suggested about human evolution, but in a new way, with new and more precise information, and the other contradicts a commonly held belief that those of us who think about these things a lot have long known to be a fallacy.

First, the rate of human evolution is higher now, and has been higher for tens of thousands of years, than the rate of evolution is expected to be for, say, a typical ape, and higher than we believe it may have been previous to, say, 50,000 years ago. In other words, higher than expectations, with this increase being relatively recent.

Yea! We evolve fast! Good for us. Of course, just remember that the ultimate outcome of evolution so far seems to be extinction, at least this has been the case for most species, so don't you get all full of yourself, human!

The other conclusion is this: Yes, you hear all the time that "culture overrides biology" or similar sentiments. Well, yes it can, but it is also very often not true, and I can think of many examples of culture very much NOT overriding biology. Well, this study, indicating that as the range, intensity, and ubiquity of various cultural adaptation (read: technology of all sorts from agriculture to cell phones) increases over time, so does the rate of genetic evolution. We are probably adapting to our culture. Makes sense.

Here is what I do not like about the paper. The researchers make some seriously important assumptions about population size and change in human population over time. In so doing, they model population as an ever increasing value. There is no part of their model that has a population crash. This is based on a number of papers that are individually potentially weak in this area, as well as, I think, a general assumption that archaeologists and others often make about the past. I've written and given talks about this phenomenon in the past, but apparently my wisdom has not yet been understood (damn them!)... We tend to make the assumption that changes we see happening today, in a certain direction, always happened in that direction in the past. We also tend to make the assumption that a given feature of human endeavor... writing, agriculture, whatever, is tied by an unbroken line to an origin evinced in some record (or assumption) in the past. Both of these assumptions are invalid, yet powerful in shaping our view of prehistory and history.

Indeed, the idea that agriculture was invented once (in each of the several areas in which it was invented) and continued to the present is an assumption that has not been tested. How do we know agriculture was not invented a few times over the last 100,000 years, but fell totally out of use in many areas?

This one-wayness and simplicity imposed on the past very much applies, inappropriately, to the population model used in this paper. The authors are very well aware of population crashes and bottlenecks, but probably do not adequately take them into account in this work. If you go into the archaeological record and look at the Last Glacial Maximum, it is actually pretty hard to find evidence of people living anywhere but a few locations, for instance. (That was about 18,000 years ago.) The assumption of a steady increase is unfounded.

Nonetheless, I liked the paper. Look for it to be widely cited and frequently abused, like all good papers.

Hawks, John Hawks, Eric T. Wang, Gregory M. Cochranâ¡ Henry C. Harpending, and Robert K. Moyzis. (2007) Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Forthcoming. PNAS.

gregladen Fri, 10/24/2008 - 08:00

Tags

I wouldn't wonder that we have an increase in the rate of evolution given the differing circumstances people have been exposed to over the past 10K years as opposed to the past 150K. When you consider living in larger, settled populations, often in conjunction with animals, I would think the unprecedented disease/parasite load would require humans to evolve faster (the Red Queen effect). It would be interesting to look at rates among different populations (although I would fear some groups claiming 'we're more evolved than them'). I'm sure there are scads of prehistoric plagues that would have forced the situation, and that this would also have resulted in multiple population bottlenecks through time.

So, uh...when are we scheduled for blowing stuff up with our minds? I think that's the real question here...

I have read your article on evolution rates as well as numerous others and has anyone tried to estimate the number of mutations required to get a Homosapien evolved form a "Lucy"? Austrailopithicus.... sorry for the spelling.
It seems to me we know what we had 6.3 million years ago and we know what we have now so what are the deltas to get to where we are now and is there enough time?
I see no discussion on this matter...

What I had for brunch: A Trip to Bitch Lake

gregladen — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:17:51 +0000

What I had for brunch: A Trip to Bitch Lake

They say Lake Itasca is the source of the Mississippi. This is why there is a big state park surrounding the lake, a park that preserves some beautiful old forest despite the best efforts of 19th century lumberjacks to cut it down.

Amanda next to the tallest white pine tree in Minnesota I've been to Itasca a number of times, and I've even done archaeological research there (which didn't turn out to be very interesting). But when I went to Itasca last week, it was my first visit with no work agenda, and I got to spend more time poking around and seeing the sights. I was visiting because Amanda was recruited to run demos for the research lab she has been working in for the incoming bio grad students (who are all sent to the forest the summer before they start), and she got to bring me. So I drove over from the cabin.

There surely were much larger trees in this state before the lumberjacks killed them all, but at the moment, the tallest white pine is here at Itasca. I've seen taller white pines, but this one is pretty impressive and, of course, its tallness is impossible to photograph.

The tallest red pine is supposedly in this park as well, but I'm not so sure. If you look at it (picture below) it seems to be missing it's top. In comparing the drawing of this red pine tree on the plaque commemorating its tallosity to the actual tree, I'd say there is about 22 feet missing.

But what about this source of the Mississippi thing?

Well, this is kind of interesting. Lake Itasca was firmly established as the source of the Mississippi in 1889. This was over 80 years after the source of the Missouri was established. The source of the Nile was established at this level of certainty (though it was earlier claimed) in 1871. And with the source of the Mississippi what, less than an hour from the cabin, how could this have been established so late in the game? The city of Bemidji, just down stream from Itasca, on the river, was incorporated in 1896!!!!

Lake Itasca is shaped like a giant tuning fork. The fishing here isn't bad.

I'm not going to bore you with the details of this story, nor am I going to support any one of the possible arguments that one could lay out about what the source of that great river that flows into the Gulf of Mexico really is. But I will give you a few interesting tidbits to chew on.

First, at the large scale, consider the Missouri river. Where the Missouri and the Mississippi river combine, they are pretty much the same size: Big-ass. The Mississippi, on an average day, is larger, but the Missouri floods are much much larger, so on average, it might be difficult to pick one vs. the other as the main river vs. the tributary. If straightness (the Missouri makes a turn into the Mississippi) was a factor, well, fine, but there are plenty of rivers where the straight one is the short one and the less straight partner is the longer river with the greatest flow.

Visitors to the outlet of Itasca enjoy pretending to be the coolest thing this side of the Mississippi. Or no, THAT side of the Mississippi. No, wait, THIS side of the Mississippi. And so on, until they get hungry and walk up the trail to the gift shop and restaurant newly built.

Some of this may have to do with the fact that the Mississippi flows south, "down map" for much of it's course, while the Missouri comes in at an angle, "across map." That seems strange, but it matters to some people. Note, for instance, that the Mississippi up here in Minnesota makes a big question mark (or, as some say, a fishing hook). It flows out of Itasca to the north, and eventually wanders eastward, then southward, then westward, then southward again. This is so enigmatic to so many visitors to the state park that there is actually an educational exhibit explaining how the Mississippi River flows 'up map' for a while. Can you believe that?

This is the sort of thing that makes me laugh when people extol the great abilities of the human mind.

Here's another point. Here in Minnesota, there are multiple lakes that were originally suggested as the source of the Mississippi, and in fact, this is where the confusion has occurred causing this issue to be settled so late. We now understand that the local people, mainly Native Americans but also some African Americans, French (prior to their expulsion and subsequent widespread mispronunciation from the state) and the mixed ethnic offspring of these presottans, knew where Itasca was ... it was not 'discovered' by Henry Schoolcraft when he first visited Itasca in 1832 (thus beginning the debate over which lake was the source). But this origin question was more of interest to European types who had been fighting out similar issues elsewhere in the world, and who had taken to using rivers as boundaries rather than as central themes in their cultural geography.

Just last week, this happened: Amanda and I were driving around the lake, and we pulled over to look up some plants and watch some birds. So there we were gazing across a stream passing through a marsh opening into Itasca. The stream was an outlet from another lake behind us. Another lake. Upstream from Itasca. So why was that lake, known today as Elk Lake, not the source of the Mississippi?

It's complicated, and the short answer is that this part of Minnesota is a giant swamp with some parts of the swamp being more open water (those are the lakes) and some being less open (those are the forests). The real source of the Mississippi is either some muddy stream uphill (like by nine inches) from Itasca, or it is simply this entire quagmire taken as a whole.

What about the name "Itasca"? All these names up in these parts are either French or Native. The French names are always butchered as part of a deep seated hatred Minnesotans have of the French. For instance, the following lake: Lac l'homme Dieu (Lake of the god-man?) is pronounced as follows:

Lake La Hama Doo.

Mississippi means "Father of Waters" down in the state of Mississippi, but here in Minnesota (which means either "sky colored" or "muddy" waters) it is said to mean "Great Waters."

Itasca is, however, different. Neither Native nor French, it is from the Latin, derived from the words veritas and caput (truth and head ... the true head). This name was provided by the 'discoverer' Schoolcraft. I suppose it started with:

Veritascaput

And then they played around with it for a while: ritascap ... veritascapu ... ascaput ... itascap ... itasca. Itasca! That one sounds Indian, by jove, we'll use that one!

But as you may imagine, the lake was not always named Itasca. It already had an Indian name or two. Could have been worse. The lake I mentioned before, Elk Lake, was for a while named Lake Glazier, after some guy named Glazier, who claimed that ... ah let's see ... right, Lake Glazier is the source of the Mississippi. He also drew maps of Lake Glazier and Itasca, and in his maps, Glazier (Elk) is much larger than it is in real life.

Omashkoozo-zaaga'igan is the original native name, Ojibwe, for, wait for it ... Elk Lake. So Elk Lake became True Head Lake and Glazier Lake became Elk Lake.

But .. in between being called Omashkoozo and being called Itasca, it was called ...

... La Biche.

And what, you may ask, is this word from French, "La Biche"? I'll bet a lot of French speaking people are not sure, but I'll tell you. It means Elk (female elk, to be exact). It was Elk Lake!

So, you may ask, are there Elk in Itasca Park? There were. In the 19th century, Itasca was well inside of wild Elk range. Today the nearest wild Elk is about 75 miles north. (There are of course "domestic" elk here and there ... we eat them now and then.)

Itasca is nice. If you are ever in the neighborhood, do try to drop in. And if you do, stop by the cabin, we'll cook up some elk burgers.

gregladen Mon, 08/25/2008 - 16:17

Tags

Minnesota

Nature-Nurture

Notes from the North Country

That takes me way back. In the 1950s I worked on a farm (well, some cleared space) north of Bemidji for a summer. And later, when I was in graduate school in Minneapolis, my wife and I drove to Itasca with an Ojibwe grandmother and her granddaughter so the granddaughter could see it. We were on our way to Red Lake Res for a week of visits.

You forgot to mention that all the native names were butchered by the French.

This is the second time I've seen you mention Minnesota's great hatred for the French. As a part-French Minnesotan, I've never seen nor heard of this. Of course, this part of the family is in the southern part of the state. Details?

Stephanie,

Where I grew up, not too far from French Canada, there was a phrase used ... mostly no longer used but remnant from a few generations back ... for the part of town where the African Americans lived. There was another phrase used for towns up north where Canadians lived. The first part of the African American place was a derogatory term for African Americans. The first part of the parallel term for the Canadian place was an equivalent expression of derision for Canadians.

I learned to not say the "F word" in polite company. Not "fuck" .... the other "F word." We also had a K word but that wasn't considered as bad, and in fact, was later used for one of the 'Kanadian' sports teams. Kanook (or canuke).

So, I move to Minnesota, a region first settled by various Native American groups, then the French, and eventually the Germans like everyone else. But the Scandahoovians were in large number here in pockets and have made the claim on this land. Post WW I the Germans felt so repressed by all the other ethnic groups that they were compelled to organize, and they erected a statue of a famous German General (Herman the German) down in New Ulm, but even with this effort they've never taken their rightful place as the primary European immigrant group (the group in largest number) in the region. The Irish and the Ukranians and Poles came as well, but the Scandahoovians made them live on the East Bank of Minneapolis, or forced them into labor building roads in Saint Paul. The Irish were paid in "tots" ... drinks ... which eventually backfired because now it is impossible to find one's way around in St. Paul on those roads. The Eastern Europeans were forced to open deli's on the East Side and were not allowed across the river except to work in some of the factories, in which they were occasionally blown up.

But this all happened AFTER the first primary European settling of the area, during which many towns were established, relationships with the Indians were formed, and all of the transport routes (especially those by canoe) were worked out. That was the French period of which we hear nothing today. All we have today are butchered place names like Lake Lahamadoo, absurd places like "Little Canada," and the obnoxiously named immigrant neighborhood ... where many of the immigrants are put temporarily when they come into Saint Paul, but which was originally the French Ghetto..

.... It makes me cringe to say it ...

"Frog Town"

If nobody in Minnesota has a problem with the French, then where is all the French Cuisine, French Langauge, other French Culture, and why is it called Frog Town? Why?

Frogtown, right. There are a couple of other theories about the name, but yours is popular and may well be right.

I've never really thought about the narrative of Minnesota settlement as being centered around the cities as anti-French. I've generally just thought that it fit better with the bigger American narrative of expansion and conquest. If anything, I've thought of it as anti-native. It's much harder to make a claim that you have to make big changes to control the native population if they're already getting along with their other non-native neighbors.

It's never terribly safe to generalize from me, but as far as being French goes, well, my family has been French in Minnesota so long, and blended with so many other groups, we're just Minnesotans. As far as I know, there were no anti-French incidents locally to consolidate the group identity the way the Acadian transport did for Canada or to make it something to preserve. We do still celebrate the voyageurs around here, though, and traces of their culture are certainly still to be found in Minnesota.

So there are arguments for both sides. I'll have to give it some more thought.

"but this one is pretty impressive and, of course, its tallness is impossible to photograph."

Sounds like a ultra wide lens investment is needed!

Ribbit.

Frog Town is derogatory to the French?

What about Coon Rapids? Isn't that derogatory to African Americans? Is White Bear Lake, my home town, derogatory to Caucasians?

Oh, and tallness isn't impossible to photograph if you have The Gimp or Photoshop.

A technical question: If a person were to urinate at the outlet of Lake Itasca, how long would it take that liquid to reach St. Louis?

Case in point of language butchery -- Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis (and Nicollet Island), pronounced 'nick-o-let'.

Yes, but New Ulm isn't pronounced New Oolm either. Nor is Edina pronouned Ehdeena.

Virgil: About 3 months.

Unsympathetic reader: I'm always surprised when I go to other states and they pronounce Nicollet as "nick-oh-lay".

Hey, you guys, I was using my cell phone to take this picture..... I tried duct taping the fish eye on there but it didn't work...

By the way, Whle Hennepain (pronounced here hen-i-pin) was an actual French guy, Nicollet was not. He was a late 19th century developer and land owner, not a Jesuit missionary or explorer or fur trader. So, the pronunciation "Nick - Let" is maybe more correct.

Uh, Greg, although the fact that he changed his first name means he may not have pronounced his last name the same way his parents did, he was born in France.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nicollet

Ah, right, I think i may have been confused about Nicollet. I was thinking of larpenteur, and possibly of a later nicollet.

But, I do not take a wikipedia article that claims that Nicollet surveyed the upper Mississippi in North Dakota (where the Mississippi isn't" as absolutely authoritative in every detail.

There is that. :)

Your very interesting blog helped to induce me to make a rush trip over to Itasca State Park a month ago and get some photos of the sources of Lake Itasca. The Park does a good job telling the history of the conservation efforts, early settlers and natives, but I thought their info on the early white-guy explorers was a bit selective. I looked for and didn't find any mention of Lt. Allen - the topographer of the 1832 Schoolcraft-Allen Expedition who (with his own crude global-positioning system) finally got Lake Itasca and its outlet fixed geographically. I had a few other history-related quibbles but they disappeared when I got out in the woods and off-trail which is where I generally belong anyway. I summarized my trip here:
http://www.jlindquist.com/mapsupp6.html