[extropy-chat] Why Progress Might Slow Down

[J Corbally]

>Message: 1
>Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 15:10:38 -0600
> >From: <kevinfreels at hotmail.com>
>Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Why Progress Might Slow Down
>To: "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
>Message-ID: <Law10-OE44rTAY0XX190000fc23 at hotmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> > Especially since the claim is wrong. Historically, rural America, which
> > was most of America prior to the 20th century, was heavily homogenous
> > and inbred. Social instruments prevented ethnic, religious, and caste
> > cross breeding. Catholics, Jews, Orthodox, and Protestants all looked
> > down on marrying outside one's religion. Same thing with ethnic groups,
> > some times to very violent degrees of enforcement (lynching for whites
> > and blacks marrying). Well educated parents looked down on marrying
> > uneducated, wealthy looked down on marrying beneath ones own kind.
> > There was little upward mobility by marriage in pre-20th century
> > America, all socio-economic mobility occured via industriousness, but
> > still did not remove social pressures against crossing ethnic and
> > religious barriers.
> >
> > Even with the westward migration, ethnic groups tended to cluster unto
> > themselves. Germanics, Norwegian, Swedes, Dutch, Scotch, Irish,
> > Hispanics, Italians, etc all tended to cluster, and when the clustered,
> > they inbred.

>OK. I know I am sticking my neck out to be chopped off, but I have to
>totally disagree here. History has shown that at each and every opportunity,
>human beings will have have sex with anything that moves.

This is (unintentionally I'm sure) the funniest statement I've heard today.

So essentially, when I comes to randy humans, anything that's not nailed to 
the floor probably soon will be.

>In "Mapping Human History: Discovering Our Past Through Our Genes" Steve
>Olson takes an in depth look at both the male Y haplotypes and mitochondrial
>DNA. Both show the extensinve outbreeding of various ethnic and religious
>people's of the world. Yes, inbreeding and isolation created much of the
>races we see today, but since the dawn of language and trade, this has been
>reversing itself. When you look at people such as the Jewish community, you
>see that although their religion doesn;t allow for breeding outside their
>group, it has happened frequently enough that their DNA is almost
>indistinguishable from others in the larger middle-eastern region. As you
>leave the region, the spread of the genes "feathers" into the next region.
>People from regions a long distance away may share little with each other,
>but as you get geographically closer, the genetics become more similar
>regardless of the religious or ethnic affiliation.

At the end of the day, sex was a fairly covert affair, whether premitted or 
forbidden.  There'll always be the one's (many) that got away.

>
>Although whites and blacks were "lynched" for being together, it happend
>frequently enough that most whites have a little black in them and
>vice-versa. In fact, many whites share more DNA similarities with blacks
>than with other whites.

True, either through secret affairs (pace Jefferson) or through force 
(Master on Slave).  More typically the latter, I'm sure.

>Unless a population were totally isolated for a long period of time, you
>wouldn;t have this. One man walking past an isolated community and raping a
>woman from that community in the forest can completely disrupt this
>isolation.
>Heck, all you have to do is look at the number of people willing to have sex
>with farm animals and you will know just how promiscuous humans beings are.
>Although mating with people outside their religion and/or ethnic groups has
>always been looked down upon, and the tendency to "cluster" cannot be
>denied, a look at the DNA shows that outbreeding happens much more
>frequently than it is admitted to.

My understanding is that we're an inbred species to begin with.  IIRC, 
chimps are more genetically diverse than we are.


James...

>Kevin Freels
>
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