Two Heretical Evolutionary Thoughts

Food for thought.

Consider “evolutionary herding.”

Drug resistance mediated by clonal evolution is arguably the biggest problem in cancer therapy today. However, evolving resistance to one drug may come at a cost of decreased growth rate or increased sensitivity to another drug due to evolutionary trade-offs. This weakness can be exploited in the clinic using an approach called ‘evolutionary herding’ that aims at controlling the tumour cell population to delay or prevent resistance.

One can imagine a human population that develops certain mental, physical, and/or cultural traits that enable them to survive certain types of environmental challenges – including sociopolitical and cultural challenges – but makes them more vulnerable to another type of challenge. Is this analogous to the pathological altruism of certain (“high trust northern hunter gatherer”) European strains, originally adapted to ancient environmentally challenging yet demographically homogeneous conditions, in today's multiracial and multicultural societal niches?  Alternatively, have today's Western societies created a strain of Jew (or other non-European minority) adapted to the current System, but that has sensitivity to another sociopolitical System due to “evolutionary trade-offs?” By analogy, was the vulnerability of Jews to the National Socialist regime an example of “evolutionary herding” of Jews to the more Jew-friendly conditions of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment secular-liberal Europe?

“Harnessing competition.”

Researchers administer low levels of a drug, enough to kill most, but not all, of the vulnerable cells in the tumor population while favoring the survival of drug-resistant lineages. Once the tumor has shrunk, clinicians stop administering the drug. The drug-sensitive cells, which tend to have a competitive edge over cells that have invested in a costly drug-resistance mechanism, can now begin to grow back. Competition between drug-sensitive and drug-resistant cells for resources in the tumor microenvironment keeps the tumor size in check.

Thus, cycling between “treatment on” and “treatment” off strategies can be of use.  First, you kill off most, but not all, of the drug-sensitive cancer cells, leaving mostly resistant cells. Then you remove the drug, and let the remaining sensitive cells grow back, crowding out the resistant cells via resource competition – under “no drug” conditions the sensitive cells have a growth advantage. Then hit with the drug again, etc.

Let’s take Bowery’s concept of “Jewish virulence” and expand it to this concept. What if more extreme anti-Semitism selects for a more virulent strain of Jew, but one that comes with costs – the same mental and physical traits allowing them to survive extreme anti-Semitism (misanthropy, paranoia, excessive ethnocentrism, and who know what else – perhaps better crypsis and/or greater mobility) makes those same Jews less competitive under conditions of lesser anti-Semitism. Thus, under conditions in which the Jewish infection (or neoplastic growth) cannot be eliminated in a Western society, alternating between greater and lesser levels of anti-Semitism could maintain sufficient numbers of vulnerable Jews so as to prevent the permanent establishment of a fully resistant Jewish strain, and thus keep the infestation under control.

The Tropical Conundrum

A k-selected tropical race?

My thesis that East Asians are a tropical, non-arctic, global south people, is supported by the genetic-evolutionary evidence; thus:

..the gene persisted because, contrary to popular belief, East Asians from thousands of years ago enjoyed a relatively humid climate, and this gene kept them from overheating due to the abundance of sweat glands it generated.

See more on this here.

Opponents of this thesis would point to certain aspects of the East Asian/Chinese phenotype, including the so-called “k-selected” life history pattern, which they aver to be evidence of an “arctic” origin. That can be answered as follows.

First, the  flat faces of East Asians, which “just so” stories ascribe to a selective advantage in “the cold, windy north” can be just as easily explained by sexual selection and/.or by the process of neoteny. The epicanthic fold is just as easily explained by sexual selection as by “protection from snow glare.”

What about behavioral k-selection and the alleged high-IQ? Note the theory that capital punishment in Europe selected against violent men and selected for more law-abiding people. Very well. Let's consider how a similar process could have worked in the Far East. China has long been unified, with various permutations of centralized leadership and the “emperor system,” and thus there has long been selective pressure for a more docile, law-abiding, conformist, and k-selected people. Domestication in animals is known to result in neoteny; the same applies here, as the highly domesticated tropical Chinese become relatively neotenic, coupled to an almost non-existent sexual dimorphism. Selective pressure for intelligence was a consequence of the necessity of administering the centralized nation with its large population. Large scale rice farming (rice being rather tropical, no?) also necessitated intelligence and cooperation.

One can imagine sub-Saharan Africa under a single leader, demanding absolute obedience, and requiring able administrators; the same selective pressures would have occurred there.

Other East Asians followed the Chinese model and/or were assimilated into Chinese genetic patterns – China being so much larger in population than neighboring lands, the gene flow was undoubtedly mostly from China outwards.

Thus, an EXTREME TROPICAL PEOPLE like the East Asians, with the Chinese as the archetype, became modified so as to exhibit some patterns of phenotype/behavior unlike the typical tropical pattern. Some is not all, or even most. The underlying East Asian racial identity is still tropical; thus, they always revert to kind, as shown in the current coronavirus crisis.

By the way, speaking of neoteny, increased neoteny in East Asians supports the contention that the “yellow fever” fetish has its roots in part in sublimated pedophilia – hence, the omega White males admire Asian females for having child-like phenotypes. Is this why one proponent of “yellow fever” is on record as stating that he doesn’t understand why possession of child pornography should be a crime?

The tropical nature of the Chinese is one reason why China is the natural destination for mass Black African migration.

The future of China is pictured here.  That is – that must be – the long-term, ultimate outcome of the natural and desirable amalgamation of the Chinese and Black Africans.

We must, absolutely must, fight for the day when the entire population of China looks like that individual and has a similar racial ancestry. That is the bright future for China that every right-thinking, progressive Chinese should support, strive for, and fight for. Only a hate-filled Chinese bigot would oppose the free flow of Black Africans into China from Africa and the peaceful, natural, and reinvigorating merger of the two races.  

Cultural Group Selection

Interesting paper. 

See here.

Human cooperation is highly unusual. We live in large groups composed mostly of non-relatives. Evolutionists have proposed a number of explanations for this pattern, including cultural group selection and extensions of more general processes such as reciprocity, kin selection, and multi-level selection acting on genes. Evolutionary processes are consilient; they affect several different empirical domains, such as patterns of behavior and the proximal drivers of that behavior. In this target article, we sketch the evidence from five domains that bear on the explanatory adequacy of cultural group selection and competing hypotheses to explain human cooperation. Does cultural transmission constitute an inheritance system that can evolve in a Darwinian fashion? Are the norms that underpin institutions among the cultural traits so transmitted? Do we observe sufficient variation at the level of groups of considerable size for group selection to be a plausible process? Do human groups compete, and do success and failure in competition depend upon cultural variation? Do we observe adaptations for cooperation in humans that most plausibly arose by cultural group selection? If the answer to one of these questions is "no," then we must look to other hypotheses. We present evidence, including quantitative evidence, that the answer to all of the questions is "yes" and argue that we must take the cultural group selection hypothesis seriously. If culturally transmitted systems of rules (institutions) that limit individual deviance organize cooperation in human societies, then it is not clear that any extant alternative to cultural group selection can be a complete explanation.

Of course, “non-relatives” is relative (no pun intended).  In an ethnoracially homogeneous society, and focused on that society to the exclusion of the outside world. One can view cooperative social structures as being among “non-relatives” since, in that monoethnic background, non-family = non-relatives.  However, in a demographically diverse state, or when considering the interactions of a monoethnic states with the rest of the world, genetic gradients become salient, and one can view the ethny among which group cooperation may work as a group of relatives.  If “kin selection” is invoked as one explanation for large cooperative societies, then the genetic gradients that exist between groups at levels greater than that of between families must be considered.  Further, as genes and culture exhibit bidirectional feedback, cultural group selection will, by its very nature if practiced by competing genetically distinct groups, will lead to genetic group selection (a form of kin selection) as a matter of course.

Also importantly, the concept of cultural group selection, particularly: “…culturally transmitted systems of rules (institutions) that limit individual deviance…” is a tool of social control to repress free-riding (the knee-jerk response of the mendacious who wish to poke holes in group selectionist theories, or even the EGI concept of Salter, which at its most fundamental is not dependent on group selection theory) – never mind my previous argument (made here at this blog) that inter-ethnic free-riding is always ignored by those who foam at the mouth about intra-ethnic free-riding, despite the fact that the inter-ethnic form is more damaging (due to the greater genetic distance between those riding and those being ridden) and also harder to control my social norms (it is easier to control the behavior of culturally similar people of your own group than bizarre aliens who are exploiting you).