Hacker News Reader

Comment by hubber | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

This the "cold winters theory", popularized by the academic fraudster Richard Lynn (of "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" fame). It's a just-so story. You could tell the same story about the selective pressure for intelligence and problem-solving in hot climates; try to eat in the Kalahari sometime.

Really, the more you think about that theory, the dumber it gets.

>You could tell the same story about the selective pressure for intelligence and problem-solving in hot climates

You sure could! Why wouldn't you? Do you reject the concept of evolution via natural selection in all species or only humans?

Just so long as we're clear that this is storytime and not science, sure.

What does that mean? You reject natural selection as "storytime and not science"?

What is being rejected is not evolution by natural selection. What is being rejected is untestable, just-so stories invented to explain why certain biological traits evolved. Or, as is the case here, to explain traits that are assumed to have evolved in certain populations

The premise was more that we can say with near-certainty that there are non-visible genetic differences between the races without even knowing specifically what these traits are or the extent to which they have diverged. We know this based on our understanding of genetics, natural selection, migration patterns, randomness, and the passage of time.

It would actually be quite the story if the races were somehow identical in all of these traits.

Both of these positions are untestable. One, however, is extremely likely while the other would be a miracle even in the wildest fantasies of the wokest progressive.

Your "extremely likely" scenario is the "cold winter theory", which is problematic for many reasons including the myriad of historical instances where hot-climate civilizations outpaced cold-climate civilizations.

So? Why do you think that should be impossible?

How would you explain how geographically distant groups in radically different conditions could, over millennia, converge on all of the exact same non-visible traits without even minor variations? I truly can't imagine a way that this would be possible aside from the infinitesimally unlikely product of completely random chance.

You're not even telling a coherent story at this point. The "cold winter theory" isn't merely that the populations are different (though: again: when you look at the molecular evidence and the way genes propagate, it's nowhere nearly as clear as you'd think), it's that the cold winter populations are smarter. But you have to literally ignore most of human history to reach that conclusion. Somehow, in this view of the world, evolution only kicked in a couple hundred years ago. Seems unlikely!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com