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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28151 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024

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We also know that combinations of traits can often be greater than the sum of their parts. Maybe the inclinations and instincts of a Frenchman are enhanced by admixture with those of a Norwegian or a Greek.

It can go either way. Yes, sometimes magic does happen, but given how massively-polygenic a lot of complex traits are it seems much more likely to me that in any given foreign matchup something is going to break.

Different populations have evolved different complex solutions to similar problems. Maybe a child inherits a full set of both and is extra-good at whatever that thing is. But inheriting two partial incompatible solutions is bad news.

But this is all theoretical. I haven't seen anything solid on this topic since https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2017/04/is-mixed-race-breeding-bad-for-you/ which is hardly conclusive.

Kind of depends whether you find some value in the other.

Oh to be sure. It's an interesting exercise to imagine having children with partners of many different races just to see what it looks like for yourself to be blended with those things. But, a responsible parent does wish to ensure that he's at least not doing his children a disservice by creating them with internally-inconsistent genetic loadouts such that they have conflicting instincts, mental traits meant for highly-intelligent people but not the intelligence itself, etc.

Different populations have evolved different complex solutions to similar problems. Maybe a child inherits a full set of both and is extra-good at whatever that thing is. But inheriting two partial incompatible solutions is bad news.

Mixed race people exist. The data on whether mixed race people outperform the average of their ethnic ancestry should be pretty simple to come by.

AFAICT, Latinos act like the weighted average of Indian and Spanish people, but have slightly better health.

The data on whether mixed race people outperform the average of their ethnic ancestry should be pretty simple to come by.

If you click that link in my post (the one to which you're responding here) you'll get some insight into how not-simple that is, actually. Mixed-race people are almost definitionally born to outlier parents, e.g.

That's why I pointed to Latinos- a long established and not particularly selected mixed population.

Hmm, so continuing on that -- if it's true that mixed-race people are already positively selected (since the opportunity to intermarry is cosmopolitan and affluent) then actually answering the central question here may be nearly impossible.

This is the situation as I understand it, yes.

Different populations have evolved different complex solutions to similar problems. Maybe a child inherits a full set of both and is extra-good at whatever that thing is. But inheriting two partial incompatible solutions is bad news.

In a situation where the problems are relatively stable, this might be true. If you expect that the pace of change will increase (or even match the last 50 years) then perhaps a larger set of solutions is beneficial in that in increases the chances of having the right tool to address a new situation.

In other words, instead of having a loadout hyperoptimized for a given situation that might not even be there in a few years, a broader set of inclinations increases the fitness under a wider variety of potentialities.

In a situation where the problems are relatively stable, this might be true. If you expect that the pace of change will increase (or even match the last 50 years) then perhaps a larger set of solutions is beneficial in that in increases the chances of having the right tool to address a new situation.

Yeah, I'd expect that it's good for the population in general to have some of this going on. Not necessarily for most of the individuals in question, though.

It can go either way. Yes, sometimes magic does happen, but given how massively-polygenic a lot of complex traits are it seems much more likely to me that in any given foreign matchup something is going to break.

If anything it's likelier a mixed-race couple* would be much more likely to lead to things not breaking. Many of the worst genetic illnesses are inherited precisely because both parents carried the same recessive gene, which is obviously less likely with more genetically distant partners. This is the whole reason inbreeding is risky.

*This is accepting, for the sake of argument, that you could call a French-Norwegian or French-Greek couple "mixed-race" with a straight face.

Check out the article I linked; it goes into that. But in short, yes, that's also a consideration.

This is accepting, for the sake of argument, that you could call a French-Norwegian or French-Greek couple "mixed-race" with a straight face.

Race subdivides fractally.

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