
DNA pioneer James Watson has final honours stripped amid racism row - pseudolus
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/james-watson-racism-honours-dna-double-helix-cold-spring-harbor-laboratory-a8724896.html
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aurizon
This reminds me of that Star Trek episode where the local aliens were
bilaterally symmetrical humanoids, with one side solid white and the other
side solid black. There was conflict between those who were white on the right
side and white on the left side and each persecuted and tried to enslave the
other as 'inferior - isn't it obvious?' Yet in this PC eruption with Watson we
have to examine the merits of what he says. We know genes encode skin, hair,
eyes and thousands of other attributes that - over time - have evolved to suit
local conditions. That is why melanized skin clusters close to the equator and
we lighten as we go away from the equator. There are other things close to the
equator, like a permanent growing season - food crops, animals, and predators
are more common and population density is higher. With higher density of
population competition for food gets more intense. Tribes form to protect
food/crops/prey etc., these tribes have different organizational structures,
much like an army, tribes have structured leaderships - chains of command, so
tribal society may well evolve to favor loyalty to the strong leaders and
disfavor community decision making? Can you envision an army where the
privates discussed their orders, and fed their comments up the line to cancel
an attack - we do not want to take this risk... Examining this granularly, we
may well find a tribal society values combat skills as more valuable than
intellectual skills. Throwing a spear, chasing an enemy, and combating an
enemy and similar skills are crucial to tribal survival. Intellectual skills
are down graded and - to a degree - fade away as evolution does it's work.
What this means is a intelligence has many factors and some are 'body smarts'
and some are 'head smarts', in the sense that a faster runner or a more
accurate and far ranging spear thrower is smarter than me, yet I can parse
Latin sentence structures, sadly an inferior combat skill. This may well mean
that we need to examine and modify our thoughts on this topic to fully
understand and fit reality to theory and not just hit the PC button.

~~~
zunzun
Perhaps he had been smoking too much phlogiston.

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ohiovr
Scientists don’t like their crazy uncles.

