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Comment by danieltillett | Hacker News Reader

I find it interesting that the "solution" to the scientific question if all living humans are the same species is to claim that all the ancestors of living people belong to the same species despite all the genetic evidence saying otherwise.

Rather than deny reality, the alternative would be to say that current populations are not the same species, but that the differences are unimportant. Why does it matter if we are not all the same species if the differences are minor?

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Why define interbreeding populations which have an order of magnitude more genetic variation within them than between them as separate species? Now that sounds like a definition which would owe more to racial politics than science.

Indeed the author's point was more or less the opposite: that Neanderthals were still "people" in the sense they tended to exhibit quite similiar behaviour and capabilities to homo sapiens sapiens despite their DNA actually being quite substantially different to the point you could meaningfully define them as separate species.

>Why does it matter if we are not all the same species if the differences are minor?

Because like it or not, we still live in highly volatile, dangerous political times, and scientists getting behind the idea that there are clear racial lines dividing us all will not contribute to the peace-making. Its an uncomfortable truth that sometimes science is really hindered by politics, and this is one of those situations where its a highly, highly charged subject with potential to create a significant degree of upset in the world. The human species is very rarely actually prepared for the truths of science.

So your solution is to pretend science hasn't found what it has found because of the fear it might be misused?

Rather than corrupting science, isn't it better to say we have no evidence of any important genetic difference between the different populations of the world? There are better ways of avoiding the evils of racism without destroying science.

Science isn't being corrupted - people can still write the papers they want, and the eugenics thing is all about that, as well as CRISPR, et al., - but would you be content with a tin-pot dictator in Europe using these kinds of "scientific facts" as a means of developing policies which encourage ethnic cleansing? Because, well, that's sort of still happening as a thing, and won't go away as a thing, until we find a scientific solution to hatred and intolerance. Which are still very much huge things.

> scientists getting behind the idea that there are clear racial lines dividing us all will not contribute to the peace-making.

I disagree. Science promulgating obvious falsehoods like "race does not exist" breeds distrust of all science. Science needs to acknowledge that race exists in order to save science from the postmodern nihilism of politics. The world is never made a better place through scientific censorship.

Well, in that case, show me your plans for a thermo-nuclear device capable of obliterating a city, and I'll show you an excuse for building one.

I think you underestimate the ideological and political influences on science.

I really don't.

"Scientists found additional similarities between the frog genes and human genes. For instance, genes in frogs have very similar neighboring genes as humans about 90 percent of the time. In other words, the frog genome contains the same sort of “gene neighborhoods” as the human genome. "

It matters.

https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/2831/genome-sequen...

Yes all living organisms have genetic similarities because we are all decended from a common ancestor, but I am unsure how comparing a frog to a human is relevant to the question at hand.

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