Race: the Scotsman and the Yenta

[iansmith]

One could study a population that was founded by a handfull of people.. one I know of are the Sanguenay Lac-Saint-Jean, in new france in Quebec. In 1700 there were 20,000 people that explosively increased to 80,000 in 1780. It was common until 1920 to have 20 children per family. Interestingly this population was founded by far more men than females (6883 vs 600). Although consanguious relations do not occur, you would expect a level of inbreeding. There are some typical genetic disorder that occur, maybe iansmith knows more about the population.

You are confusing the colonisation of new-france (now the province of quebec) and the region of saguenay-lac-St-Jean. The french colony started with fewer women than men but the situation was somewhat rectified by the arrival of "Filles de Roi". These women, mostly orphans, were send in new-france by the king.
http://www.fillesduroi.org/Daughters/daughters.html

Many french men also stay single and many also married native american girls. Many of the native american women were those that became catholics.

The colonisation in saguenay lac St-jean, started in the mid 1800's. Few famillies (about ) set up a colonie there and this region is geographically isolated. It's a 2 hour drive from quebec city and it pass through a conservationparc and there is no civilization around. The region started with about 30,000 migrants, half of whom came from the Charlevoix county and the population is now 300 000. As monique said, familly of about 20 was not unusual because the catholic church policy that intercourse should only be for mating purpose and other non-sense.

Here is a good review on the genetic disease of in the province of quebec.
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.genom.2.1.69?cookieSet=1

 

[Adrian]

Why would anyone want to take these green pills? What's the point of limiting the people you can have fertile offspring with, besidesvthat it may satisfy certain obsessions with racial or national identity?

 

[marcus]

The story does not say, Adrian.
Perhaps a Yenta came to them in a dream and told them to do it.
Or perhaps they were all suffering at the time from an Obsessive
behavioral disorder, along the lines of what you suggest.
I would be very glad to hear anyone's ideas on why they would want to become a Species

 

[Mazuz]

One reason for why they may want to become their own species is so that they can select for their own traits. In with the human characteristics they like, and out with the ones they don't.

 

[marcus]

One reason for why they may want to become their own species is so that they can select for their own traits. In with the human characteristics they like, and out with the ones they don't.

Mazuz this is such a good answer! my own feeling is that if I wanted to find out I should somehow find a Yenta and ask her.
I think it was the Yentas who were so concerned to have endogamy among the Ashkenazi. maybe there are one or two around still whom I could ask
about what their desire or motivation was. Perhaps they just liked to interfere in other peoples reproduction! Perhaps it was a kind of artistic motive---the were creative artists in matchmaking within a certain Polish village. But I should not even try to guess! they were the experts in Yentaship and I am a nobody, in their terms.

what I mean is, Mazuz, didnt the Yentas almost make the Ashkenazi into a Species?

and if they had had green pills wouldn't they have very willingly used them?
Maybe someone else knows better about this than I.

 

[nuenke]

Now we have these 10 million Finns and they have, like us all, some fatal recessives floating around, and when we see two of them on a collision course we can do something about it. Maybe in 100 or 1000 years we get rid of most bad recessives----I don't know. But it is not a big problem for our Finns because the harmful genes are so dilute.

It seems to me that with genetic testing, any recessive genetic diseases can be filtered out of the population using pre-implantation genetic testing. As to inbreeding or outbreeding, both can have negative and positive effects. Inbreeding can concentrate some high quality genes. Any recessives that show up, since it is an inbred group, are filtered out by failure to breed. The village idiot got two bad recessives, does not breed, and they are set aside. There is such a thing as mutation loading in a species that does not inbreed. So either can have benefits or deleterious effects.

So it seems that as far as genetic disease is concerned, we are well into solving that problem with increased testing. Once past that, and we can identify genes for height, intelligence, aggressiveness, and intelligence, the game changes quickly. Those with the will, the resources, and the knowledge will use genetic engineering to improve their lineage, not just make it different. The result will be an evolutionary arms race between new species - it will not be peaceful. But in the end, the winner may be better off in terms of rationality, behavioral control, etc. Humans have not reached the level of rationality found in flatworms. As we progressed, we adopted false beliefs. Humans are the only species I am aware of to accomplish this - gain in intelligence and irrational beliefs.

It seems therefore that the next cycle of evolution for humans will throw us back to lower but more rational animals (the primitive brain) or we will evolve to be able to question the false beliefs that we hold. Several recent books discuss these issues including "What is Thought", "Why We Lie", "The Robot's Rebellion", "Being No One", etc.