User blog:Martin J Sallberg/Rapid evolution means that all evolutionary psychology is racist

DisclaimerEdit
This does NOT mean that all computationalists are racists. You can be a computationalist without being a racist if you either do not know the research about rapid evolution, or have not been thinking about the implications of it.

Evidence for rapid evolutionEdit
There is evidence, especially from domestication research, showing that evolution can go very fast (and the existence of domestication also shows that the theory that human evolution should have stopped at the dawn of civilization is silly). The dog example is often explained away by the theory of dogs having exceptionally plastic genomes, but there are examples of many different animals being domesticated in fewer generations than any model of human evolution places as a minimum for how long different modern human populations have been separated (for example, domestication of rabbits first started in the middle ages, which despite their rapid reproduction is the equivalent of far less than a hundred thousand human years). The only (neo)-Darwinian explanation is that evolution can very rapidly select on individual variation and turn it into group differences. There is also hard evidence for rapid (recent millennia) human evolution, such as lactose tolerance and Sherpa and Tibetan lung and blood vessels. This conclusively falsifies the idea of stopped human evolution, and the lactose tolerance was a direct effect of agriculture.

Adaptive evolutionEdit
If the evopsychists claim that mental evolution is different, they are contradicting one of their own holiest tenets, the rejection of all mind/body dualism. There was, and is, differences in living conditions between different cultures in different environments across them world, which could easily have such effects (starvation leading to energy-thrift which could limit brainpower, differences in child mortality causing different maturity rates and affecting learning ability, differences in the frequency and severity of survival situations that require tough decisions which could change senses of right and wrong (psychopathizing entire populations in regions with frequent famine), differences in seasons that could positively or negatively select some forms of bipolar disorder (also known as manodepressivity), differences in geographical transport possibilities that by affecting the amount of contact between tribes could change ingroup-outgroup behavior, purely cultural whims including some aspects of language which especially in combination with a culture valuing early competence could select for innate specialization for that particular language, differences in food supply creating differences in possible group size which according to the social intelligence hypothesis would create differences in intelligence and behavior or even without a Dunbar-style general intelligence formula would still cause differences in the frequency of autism, differences in reliance on hunting and other activities where hallucinations are a bad thing causing differences in the frequency of shizophrenia, differences in subsistence conditions creating differences in the frequency of non-reproductive sexual orientations (far more common in hunter-gatherers where many children is a burden than in farmers where many children is wanted), differences in the amount of sexually transmitted diseases causing differences in what form non-reproductive sexual orientations comes e.g. homosexuality if the risk is low and asexuality if the risk is high, and so on). The cultural norm parts would become especially strong in countries where the whole family of an offender is punished with death, which have been fairly common in history but far from universal, and more common in some parts of the world than in others.

Considering this massive amount of factors that could diverge, it is absurd to think that they all coincidentally were the same in all populations worldwide. It is an empirical fact that the supposedly racial mental differences does disappear when social factors are taken into account, but it is an empirical fact that computationalism and Darwinian evolutionary psychology cannot explain.

Genetic driftEdit
Furthermore, the genetic drift predicted by mainstream, neutral theory could also produce such differences. Proponents of that mainstream theory actually draw "human family trees" based on supposed population bottlenecks to explain differences in the degree of genetic variation, so the fixed limiting factor model of psychology inevitably makes racist predictions in that context as well.

What observation studies showsEdit
This means that there is a contradiction between nature explanations of individual psychiatry and nurture explanations of ethnic differences. There must be some missing methodological factor. Since racist discrimination is a form of intolerance often associated with other forms of intolerance, studies of ethnic differences effectively takes the tolerant environment factor into account, explaining why nurture explanations prevailed in studies of ethnic differences. But studies of individual psychiatry have, at least before the "Mind, Brain and Education" metastudy, not taken the tolerant environment factor into account, explaining why nature explanations prevailed there. And since giving up hope is often linked to prejudice including racist prejudice (somebody in the 1800s could deny the possibility of smart blacks by lack of concrete evidence, and racists today dismiss examples as "anecdotical" in a manner very similar to how mainstream academic naysayers in different questions denigrate examples of other things as "anecdotical"), the pessimism factor is also capable of solving the rapid evolution paradox. In other words, the social factors taken into account by studies debunking the concept of race are the same social factors that disturb recoveries after brain damage.

But for the principles of extreme recoveries after brain damage to be appliceable to de-racialization in a rapid evolution context, it is necessary that neurons can genetically engineer themselves, which is supported by the "Aneuploid neurons are functionally active and integrated into brain circuitry" study.

Most studies show that all links between race and behavior disappears when social factors are taken into account. The plasticity theories outlined here predicts that the few studies that do disagree and really show racial differences should be concentrated to countries/states where uniformly plasticity-hampering factors are enforced from an early age, such as low liability ages and/or early bestowing of ABCDEF-style grades in school (uniform enforcement makes social factors statistically indetectible). See also Moderating the free will debate.

ClarificationEdit
The limitations to what natural selection can purge does not contradict the rapid evolution principle argument since natural selection could still have a highly statistically significant effect even if unable to give a sufficiently good protection for there to be any significant chance of going free from all possible errors. This is the same principle as the fact that an umbrella with holes in it lets numbers of raindrops through, but still much fewer than with no umbrella at all. The theory of self-organizing evolution is fundamentally non-computational and therefore not part of this falsificative simulation of the absurd predictions of Darwinian evolutionary psychology. And the limits to natural selection does not apply to genetic drift at all, so mainstream theory makes racist predictions in that way too.

Strong niche construction debunkedEdit
The away-explanation of rapid evolution about strong niche construction does not work. If niche construction were strong enough to keep "psychological selection pressure" the same regardless of context, there would be no way to explain behavioral species differences in a neo-Darwinian context either. Any attempt to explain this away by claiming that humanity reached a critical strength of niche construction just in time for Homo sapiens to form contradicts evolutionary psychology's own holiest tenet, that about humanity being just another specific animal species. Placing the critical threshold of strong niche construction at the beginning of agriculture and civilization instead makes racist predictions about people whose last common ancestors were hunter-gatherers, thus failing to explain away the rapid evolution argument. Furthermore, both versions of the hypothesis of strong niche construction is thoroughly empirically falsified by the facts that emergency survival behavior exists and climate change have caused the fall of cultures and civilizations.

The away-explanation of complexity contradicts its own premiseEdit
Claiming that the rapid evolution argument does not apply to human brains because they are too complex to evolve rapidly contradicts the whole premise of computationalism, that about specific modules for specific functions that can be inherited separately from each other. If different mental functions can be inherited separately from each other and therefore have separate evolutionary histories, then holistic complexity arguments loses all relevance to the evolution of specific functions.

Genetic similarity? Do the computationalists claim that all genes are equally important?Edit
Denying the fact that computationalism makes racist predictions by saying that all human populations are very genetically similar contradicts the whole mainstream assumption that most of the genome plays little or no role. That means that some genes are supposed to be much more important than others, which in turn means that tiny genetic differences that geneticists tend to dismiss as totally insignificant can have huge effects. And single factors with bigg effects are highly likely to be affected by rapid evolution. And claiming that something most likely could not happen just because of lack of evidence that it actually happened is backwards reasoning that in no way whatsoever answers the question why it did not happen.

Biological non-isolation contradicts cultural isolationEdit
Trying to explain away the rapid evolution argument by saying that there are no biologically isolated ethnic groups contradicts the whole anthropological assumption that isolated tribes exist, and therefore undermines the whole claim that "cultural universals" are due to anything other than contact between cultures. If members of a tribe are having sex with outsiders, that tribe is patently not an isolated, uncontacted tribe. If there are close enough contacts for sex, no doubt cultural ideas will be exchanged too. So although it is in principle possible that ethnic biological isolation may be non-existent, there is no way to prove "cultural universals" if such continuity is true. And the examples of lactose tolerance and Sherpa and Tibetan lung and blood vessels disproves the extreme continuity that the argument of total non-existence of regional differences requires.

False predictions can follow logically from the premise of a theoryEdit
Claiming that evolutionary psychology does not make racist predictions just because those racist predictions have turned out to be false is like claiming that the theory of a lumniferous aether does not predict Earth-orbital changes in the speed of light in different directions just because Earth-orbital change of the speed of light in different directions is empirically falsified. It is important to distinguish between what follows logically from the premise of a theory and what is shown by experiments. Just because a prediction is false does not prevent it from following logically from the premise of a theory. In fact, theories MUST be able to make false predictions, or else it would have been impossible to disprove theories. The racist predictions are patently false, but they still follow logically from the premise of evolutionary psychology, and what that means is that evolutionary psychology is disproved by its empirically falsified prediction.

What about connectionism?Edit
Computationalism clearly makes a lot of racist predictions, but what about connectionism? By lacking the module division of computationalism, connectionism clearly does not make the massive amount of racist predictions that computationalism does. But if the version of connectionism in question believes in fixed genetic limits to learning ability, even if the learning ability is general, it still leaves doors open for racialization by rapid evolutionary adaptation to famine limiting energy comsumption of brains as well as child mortality factors necessitating different rates of maturation and thus different learning period lengths. That would, according to biologistic theory, lead to retardation taking over populations exposed to frequent famine and high child mortality. Although chromosome aneuploidies often appear to impair fertility so gene-centered theory does not predict that they should take over populations, there is nothing that stops selection favoring changes of the number of repetitions of smaller parts of the chromosomes (sub-aneuploidies). For instance, if frequent famine favored duplications of small parts of chromosome 21 imitating the cognitive effects of Down syndrome (cutting brain metabolic energy expenditure), the same selection pressure to save energy would have selected against energy-expensive duplication of portions responsible for greater muscle development.

Differences in famine and child mortality across the world are still so obvious that explaining it away by coincidental sameness of those selection pressures across the world is ridiculous. There is actually evidence that different human populations do have different numbers of repetitions of certain genes (confirmed sub-aneuploidies). If genes affect behavior, the whole idea of fixed genes must fall to logically avoid making racist predictions. So avoiding racist predictions is solved by connectionism combined with exceptionless regulation. But the same disclaimer about ignorance of rapid evolution and/or its implications as applies to computationalists also applies to fixed learning ability connectionists.

See also origin of language.