How humanity can affect the war, by turning the moon into a deathstar.

[boldilocks]

Which means it is not in humanity's interest to engage in such behavior, because it is detrimental to their future development.
Either it will stifle their future diplomatically (and possibly existentially) or it will stifle their capability to militarily assert themselves within their natural area of influence as well as their future technological development.
Being a client state isn't the end of the world, and quite likely preferable to the alternative, but why suffer either indignity when you could instead aid your side honorably?

[Werra]

How will being a tangible help in a war for survival stifle humanities options in the future? Ethics comes long after survival in the hierarchy of needs. If you steal food for a starving man, he won't think less of you for stealing.

Unless the war ends in an indecisive cease-fire, the victor will be able to do whatever they want. You better believe that'll involve securing as much influence and power as possible. Whether humans helped or not. Should the Loroi win, they will be very motivated to nip potential threats before they become an issue.
Industrial, social and ideological subversion of a foreign nation is a very powerful tool for security. And as you say not necessarily bad for the so subjected nation.

SpoilerShow

I'm 99% certain that Arioch has other plans for the setting.

[boldilocks]

But once survival is achieved, the ethics come back into play, and that is when noble warrior cultures look at slimy backstabbing culture and start wondering if this is not a civilization that is better off stifled, if not nipped in the bud.
Especially in victory, how could the loroi trust a species they can't read, who follow no rule of war and who are more than happy to engage in the most devious and amoral acts to achieve their goals?

[gaerzi]

Especially in victory, how could the loroi trust a species they can't read, who follow no rule of war and who are more than happy to engage in the most devious and amoral acts to achieve their goals?

Well, looking at how humankind has been led these past few millennia, there's one thing that has remained constant throughout radical changes in technology, cultural values, and governance methods: power has always been mostly concentrated in the hands of horny old men. And the Loroi just so happen to have 90% of their population looking very much like attractive human women.

[Werra]

@boldilocks
You are very optimistic about the integrity of nations. The Loroi seem quite rational and fact oriented, which I assume translates into their powergames being the same.
Humanity betraying the Umiak shouldn't worsen our position with the Loroi in any way. That we were willing to take such a huge risk might even be a benefit. It can signal that we were with the Loroi all the way in that war.

@gaerzi
If our leaders were young twinks, the feeling might have been mutual.

[boldilocks]

@boldilocks
You are very optimistic about the integrity of nations. The Loroi seem quite rational and fact oriented, which I assume translates into their powergames being the same.
Humanity betraying the Umiak shouldn't worsen our position with the Loroi in any way. That we were willing to take such a huge risk might even be a benefit. It can signal that we were with the Loroi all the way in that war.

The realist approach to nations and peoples that break with the laws of war, like for example false truces, is dishonor and punishment (up to and including genocide). The fact oriented and rational power game approach to a subversive nation like humanity is either decimation or extreme confinement. It would require an unparalleled arrogance on the part of the loroi to believe that an upstart and inscrutable people who managed to pull the wool over the eyes of the worst enemy the loroi had ever faced (assuming human duplicity would work on the umiak), could possibly be trusted to develop themselves, especially if the loroi became aware of the technological and industrial strides humanity were making compared to their own.

[Mk_C]

Kept you waiting, huh? I'm terribly sorry - this week has been a doozy, I was too tired in the evenings to properly engage this waste of planetary oxygen called my brain. And one time power went out in my home and it ate a half-drafted reply.

But the common information does not have to be the same, even if functionally both genetic codes achieve the same thing. Or appear to achieve the same.

But it can.

Take lactation for example. We know that Loroi do it, but we don't know whether their bodies achieve the process even remotely similar to ours. The Soia approach to bodily functions can be radically different even if it still arrives at a similar result. Thus, the genetic information can also be radically different.

But the outcome is the same, even if it's not quite lactose.

That's not something I can agree to. You ascert that Loroi express human functions. But those functions can be universal to sapient live and not specific to humans.

Barsam don't do humor and court each other through wrestling. Umiak don't even have most behavioural social functions that we could recognize as such by this point.

Pretty much any social species will find use in body language, for example

Only those with proper effectors (limbs, face, stance) and visual apparatus suited for reading such language. Pol, if their mode of living in any way resembles terran Cetaceans, would typically not see each other when they communicate. Umiak cannot smile - carapace gets in the way. So no, human smiles and gestures cannot be convergently evolved, unless by an astronomically unlikely coincidence. And even those that possess all the necessary tools are most likely to evolve languages that are different from intrinsic humanoid body language.

Pretty much any social species will find use in body language, for example. Likewise social tools like expressing happiness, share joy, nervousnes will have an expression in all alien species that are remotely comparable to humans. You claim those functions to be human, when they could also be Soia characteristics or common to sapient life in general.

But not this particular kind of expression, innit? Different humanoid species would be expected to develop drastically different languages of expression, as they develop different spoken languages. And even outside the realm of natural development, as we seem to be with blu elf - the Soia have fitted Loroi to their new purpose in a good number of ways. But not in this one. Even though natural human body language would be so utterly useless in their new purpose, and it is by itself such an ambiguous and flawed signal system. And yet they just left it in, mostly unchanged. Smiles being smiles. Soia have "Kept It Simple, Stupid".

The ability to rear the young without industrial support is extremely valuable.

Not in a thrall species.

With their overabundance of wombs and mammaries, the Loroi should also never be hard pressed for fertile women that can sit out a pregnancy or nannies to breastfeed. At least not in interstellar warfare, where the crews of starships are miniscule compared to the number of workers the industry needs to field them.

Ah, but warriors happen to be the ones that actually get to reproduce, Werra. And in the Soia period, the absolute majority of Loroi that are of any use for Soia would perform duties that don't quite mix well with pregnancy. Never mind that industrial roles were most probably filled by other species, in no small similarity to how it largely is currently in the Union, except one could expect even less civilian Loroi back in the Soia period.

Everything you've just listed is useful in some form or another for a species of space warfare thralls, if we assume that sapient thralls had to operate with a high degree of autonomy.

That is a most daring proposal. How indeed do space warriors benefit from aesthetically enjoying the beauty of harmless and useless things?

If it's not directly useful for warfare, such as empathic individuals being capable of predicting the moves of opponents

You only need mirror function for that - but you don't need the emotional trigger tied to it. That is the outcome of the only other human-like creatures that humans evolved around being other humans, largely members of the same tribe, and the most evolutionary-valuable interaction with most of those humans being the capacity to share their plights and burdens. It is entirely neurologically possible for a human-like brain to efficiently project itself onto others and receive the outcomes with absolute emotional detachment. It would be quite more efficient for warrior-thralls to be more like this, rather than like they are. And lets not disregard the possibility of Soia no longer being around because of Loroi. Because of the ways Loroi understood and felt the things they perceived in the Soia Empire, and possibly, because of how these ways turned out to be a touch too human for what Soia actually needed.

We can only speculate at whatever design principles the Soia had in mind, but what you perceive as detriments to a warrior species can easily be an advantage somewhere else. Or the drawback we see is the downside to an otherwise beneficial effect, whose overall species wide positives outweigh the negatives in individuals.

Indeed - there are no advantages, only adaptations, and this cannot be repeated enough. But how would those things be adaptations for individuals who are not even meant to function as individuals, but rather as things, and with those things being best described as "weapons"?

I'm advocating to not assume a traits existence that hasn't been shown. This means also showing care with traits that are not immediately apparent. We are dealing with alien life here.

Given the conditions, assumption of absence is more of a leap in logic than assumption of presence.

You wouldn't expect that owls can learn words just because parrots can either. And those two species are far closer genetically than humans and Loroi.

That is a daring claim.

We're circling the drain here, but that's really not a short amount of time.

it is.

Just compare the differences in dog breeds which have been achieved in less than a tenth of that timespan. Or in horse breeding, which have been domesticated for less time than dogs and who take longer to reach sexual maturity.

Pedigree-breeding is so far removed from evolutionary processes (mate distant breeds for >3 generations and find out) that When We Come To Power we will implement eugenics programs that will breed the capacity to go "muh dog breeds" in the context of evolutionary processes completely out of the human population, muwahahahahaha! It will go the way of citing current weather on the issues of global climate change.

SpoilerShow

This is the part where you might cite Darwin's insight into cattle-breeding, and show a clear misunderstanding of it's context

Or the physiological differences in humans

Physiognomical, not physiological. A different shape of the nose is not exactly the same as a different layout of core brain structures.

A species can evolve without forming new traits. Let me give you a real life example. In England there is a moth species. Some members are brown, some white. When the English factories coloured most trees in the south of the island white with sooth, the brown members of the species nearly vanished. Thus, a selector was applied which enabled the white moths to outbreed their brown counterparts. That is evolution and it happened without the moth species developing a new genetic trait. The process of evolution does not necessarily require new traits to appear. Just selective pressure to effect a change in the population.

So close, yet so far away! Consider for a moment - did that species emerge from an individual that was all-brown? Or all-white? Or both at the same time?

No, for an argument for evolution, a faithful recreation of the template is not at all necessary. Evolution happens, no matter how faithful the recreation is.

I apologize for not being clear enough. What I meant is - to consider the chances of this particular trait (the HHGR) being lost in the evolutionary processes that the Loroi population experienced in the period of it's independent existence, we have to assume that it was present in the first place to be lost. It in no way undermines your position, it's just a condition that we take in order for the argument to be possible in the first place.

Mayrs definition is not undisputed amongst a lot of biologists. Speciation does not need a huge number of changes either. Fun question. Are tigers and lions a different species? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger They're even fertile. Different species being able to have fertile offspring isn't that rare in nature.

Oooh, this one will take some unpacking.

For starters - yes, of course there are issues with Mayr's criterion, as there is with any other criteria that we have. Defining what constitutes a species is a very difficult problem overall. Mayr's criterion, for example is completely useless for that when considering groups that straight up lack any forms of sexual reproduction, like some members of the fungal kingdom. And hybridization also often makes matters much more complicated. Nevertheless, like the Standard Model having it's share flaws does not permit us to easily dismiss it, neither can we dismiss Mayr's criterion. It came about for a reason. Consider your own example with tiger/lion hybrids. If tigers and lions could hybridize freely (existing in a hypothetical state approaching panmixia with each other), then we could get us a liger, a tigon, a liliger, a titigon, a litiger, a half-liliger/half-titigon, and all of their possible combinations with pure tigers and lions. We would get us a full spectrum of specimens between the most lion-like lions and most tiger-like tigers. At which point we would be left wondering - what the hell IS a lion and a tiger as species, if we can clearly observe everything in between them? What can be the demarcation line, when no biological line exists? We would be forced to conclude that lions and tigers are false species, and really they are merely varieties of a single, extensively varied species. Fortunately, that is not the case, as tigers and lions are unable to hybridize freely - male hybrids of both kinds are known to be sterile, and even female ones suffer from severe decrease in fertility and health issues. Tigers and lions cannot exist as a singular continuous population - thus, we cannot consider them as one species, and neither we do anything that cannot exist as anything at least resembling a continuous population despite typically breeding sexually.

Which brings us to our next problem with Fst - as Fst is, as I already described, a measure of how much a population differs from a singular continuous population in a state of panmixia. It's completely pointless to apply Fst to something that certainly does not and did not exist as anything at least resembling a continuous population in recent history, as we would already know the coefficient's value - it would approach 1, with errors in the margins of the method's, the marker's and the samples limitations.

Which means that yes, it's completely valid to measure an FST distance between some species

The concept of "interspecific Fst" actually exists, I even worked with it, but it is only applied to species that appear to be freely hybridizing to the point that we are faced with the question of them being false species. Simply applying Fst by itself means applying a hypothesis of the studied groups possibly being a singular group after all, the Fst coefficient value itself reflects the robustness of such a hypothesis. Just asking the question means we are unsure is there is any meaningful line between the groups, and even receiving an answer approaching 1 only tells us that these groups do not behave like a populations in the state of panmixia at all, not that they are unrelated. Any groups within any populations that have higher pairwise Fst than such groups merely clear the bar that is lying on the floor, as I described it.

You need to understand what Fst really means. By itself it is nothing but a measure of how much a distribution of specific alleles of a specific marker or set of markers indicates that groups within a hypothetical population originated from a recent state of panmixia in a given hypothetical population, given the variance observed among the chosen markers in our sample. "Given" not being there just for posterity, as any pairwise Fst values we ever get are entirely dependant on what markers we choose and the inherent variance in the species we study, which makes the values incomparable between different markers and significantly different species. There can be extremely similar groups that achieved no evolutionary distance at all but which present a relatively high pairwise Fst due to external sources of continuous isolation, and there can be extremely varied groups on the verge of speciation due to potentially developing a true reproductive barrier within them that yet exist in the state close to panmixia, and thus would present us with a relatively high pairwise Fst. And the only things that connect Fst to evolution at any point are mutations being the source of variance that allow us to measure F-statistics, and strong fixation frequently (but not universally) accompanying speciation events. Certain groups of humans having this or that pairwise Fst tells us precisely nothing about the rate and extent of human evolution, and subsequently, it has no meaning on the issue of Loroi hypothetically losing or developing biological traits. There's no need to torment ourselves by trying to stretch an owl over a globe to uphold a flawed argument - we can just drink from the source, and through it become more learned men, which is the second best thing that can emerge from this argument, after all the fun we're having with it.

And if If you really want to play with genetic distances, you could just pick a much more fitting coefficient. Like Nei's distance, which is at least a universal variable (which makes it sorta really bad for most purposes), and which was already applied to humans and human groups before either of us was even born by the original author himself. You might want to take notice of Nei's own decades-long struggle of aligning the values presented by his coefficient with any forms of functional differences, and his (and other's) refusal to treat it as a numerical measure of evolution. Evolution is one of the most complex processes in the observed universe, involving emergent processes from molecular to population levels in interaction between those within the studied organism, it's groups, and the environment surrounding all of it, in continuous dynamic change. Like the path to Royalty, it is not measured in finger-lengths.

I've already given you my answer. A perfect copy is me or it's not perfect. An imperfect copy is another personality (construct), with its similarity to me decreasing by each passing moment.

But if it does possess similarity and commonality - how do you account for it despite the basic structure of your being working so fundamentally differently?

You shoul/d/ know better than to claim convergence based on sexual attraction.

Oh, but Tilefucker's love was forever unrequited, which is at odds with my proposal.

Yeah, I'm not advocating for that either. But the trait still needs to be shown to exist before we should consider it as existing.

Why?

Knew I'd get you with that.

That's not hard at all.

A general principle does not follow from a specific case.

How will inductive reasoning ever recover from THAT?

Just because Loroi males don't have to react like a human male to one stimulus doesn't mean they necessarily react differently to all other stimuli. Besides, we don't know yet how they react. Could be that they do react peculiarly.

Now that's an assumption, and one that has issues with some items in Occam's shaving kit.

Have you just called people with a weird laugh or sense of humour non human?

We recognize weird laughter as laughter still. Not so with Umiak.

Also, the Umiak write "Have a nice day" on their torpedoes, as far as I remember. Seems like a joke. Weird nitpick of yours.

Could be sincere, though. They very explicitly don't think as humans. Remember how humbly they are gratified to be recognized by an opponent credited for murders uncountable which they must respect. There's no need to project humanoid sarcasm into it, as it makes more sense in the context of Umiak values and behaviour being significantly different from ours.

That's totally unheard of in human history.

Indeed - quite unheard.

I'm saying that the function "friendly body language" is not specific to humans, but general to all social (sapient) animals.

Well, you're saying that now.

Yet we can still tell their mood.

Not instinctively though - we learn that waggling tail means a dog is happy.

So the function of expressing joy is not specific to humans.

Expressing it through a human smile is quite specific to humans.

She even was so openminded that she seriously considered Alex to be territorial. Which kind of implies she wouldn't have been surprised to see Alex driven by instincts that Loroi don't share at all.

Because she cannot allow to risk the assumptions while having absolutely no need for making them - she can just ask.

Which means for Loroi to share an attraction to high heels, the Soia had to recreate that peculiarity of human genetics in their creation. Therefore, a deliberate effort would have gone into this trait.

Or they could just, you know, not bother diddling with function that already performs adequately in the templeate, as they did with countless other things. Really, when considering your apprach, we are left wondering why would Soia even use a template, if they are going to deliberately rework every single thing about it. Might just make something better from pure scratch.

At least give the link. Then read "1b" and 2a".

(yawn) you're better than this.

Now answer me this. If two traits are 50/50 in a species and one trait starts becoming dominant, going up to 80/20, is that evolution?

Consider the example of Crocodilus experimentalis again.

If it isn't, because both traits are still present, then you are saying that evolution can only happen if either entirely new traits appear or old ones die off entirely.

In a population, yes. We need different function for evolution to happen.

That's obviously not the case, as the drift of genes is how traits die off. That is quite literally, the process by which evolution eliminates genes that are selected against.

Yikes, now that is a stupid statement. Consider your own example with moths. Was it genetic drift that eliminated the brown ones? Genetic drift can eliminate traits and alleles by itself only in the most technical sense - it fundamentally can happen, but it's astronomically improbable to happen. What it does constantly though is make certain traits disappear while they are not being selected against at all, but when selection is applied to other traits. It is specifically defined as an effect of random sampling of a trait not under selection - literally the opposite of what you have stated. You need to think on the concept of genetic drift some more.

It doesn't magically become evolution only once genocide has been achieved.

Oh, but that's literally how bottlenecks work, and evolution happens through bottlenecks. Though, bottleneecks are not always genocides. It can be something like a population expanding into a new environment and experiencing a founder effect.

Well, arbitrary or not - can you provide examples or not? It seems like this would be trivial if the processes you describe are indeed occurring, and on the scale which you describe. Yes, I can provide examples. The spread of lactose tolerance for one. Surely agriculturalists that have founded permanent settlements fulfill your definition of civilization. That tolerance was introduced afterwards and significantly reduced lactose intolerance in the European population. Now, you might say that the trait lactose intolerance is still present within mankind and while that is true, the European population underwent evolution in that regard.

That is a wonderful example that you have provided - not due to it being a correct example as it is not, we know that it did not emerge with pastoralism as it is present in some degree among all human populations (please read original publications before throwing more mass-media articles at me at me) - but because while lactase persistance is considered to be one of the few candidates among normal human variance for being a trait under selection due to it's mechanics, we still utterly fail at proving that this is the case, since in the population it behaves... largely according to genetic drift. As a neutral trait would. Europeans are not the only ones who have domesticated dairy cattle, you know - and yet lactose-tolerant Chinese did not tend to reproduce more successfully than their intolerant fellows. Lactose-intolerant groups simply stuck to fermented forms of dairy... as most Europeans did through most of the history. Fresh milk is not exactly a convinient foodstuff compared to cheese, and neolithic humans did not have it shipped to them in ultrapausterized tetrapaks. As far as we know, most Europeans are lactose-tolerant for the same reason that makes most Americans white. And I want you to notice that this is the single strongest case we have for any selected traits in civilized human populations, period.

1.You don't need academic credentials to be correct.

But like booze and partying - it fucking helps, especially if one is to be treated as an authority on the subject. When academia staunchly pretends that one doesn't exist for it's discourse, however, it is somewhat a real red flag.

2.My interpretation of Scotts book is not flawed in this point. He makes it pretty clear.

You do realize that I can actually read it in a day or two, right?

3.I'm not taking literature recommendations from somebody who doesn't understand that siblings get a different set of genes from each parent, every time.

We did not say anything about them sets, though. We talked about alleles. Do you think that siblings get different alleles from each parent, every time?

You're good with words and witty.

Don't you forget to mention how I'm ruggedly handsome as well.

Quite frankly I don't believe that you don't see how Roman lawfulness did result in other selectors than Germanic barbarians were under.

Very easily - by not applying any new selectors on genes, and applying them on memes instead.

In Rome for example it was possible for a large part of the population to earn its pay as thinking men, be that lawyers, engineers or scribes. The Germanic tribes offered very little such opportunities, thus Roman society was more helpful to the reproductive success of those with the genetic predisposition to these jobs.

That hinges entirely on a few assumptions:
1. That predisposition for an individual to make a living as a thinking men is genetically hereditary. That has more issues than one.
2. That functioning as a thinking man, or any kind of a wealthy man even, in Rome increased one's chances of reproductive success. You might want to consider the ethymology of the word "proletariat", and how did it come to be that for all the supposed advantages that social successes (and the genetic traits taht are necessary for said success according to you) entail to a man, we all here happen to be descendants of peasants and serfs.

Not to mention the effect reliable peace-keeping/policing must have had on society, as it significantly decreased the need for aggression in individuals by externalizing it to specialists.

I'm sure that Rome's changing cosncription policies and the evolving role of the army in the Roman sate reflected the hereditary nature of that specialisation perfectly.

That doesn't change anything about the point I made. Obviously intelligence was at one point hugely important to humans, or we wouldn't have so much of it. If IQ is not beneficial to reproduction and another trait is, then this other trait will be selected for.

Certainly. Getting opposable thumbs was also extremely beneficial for huminids aat one point - but I don't see you applying a ruler to anyone's palms now, in search of people whose thumbs are even more opposable, granting them further advantage against the lesser races.

As for the hellscape. Ask yourself this. Can you tell smart men from idiots?

Having talked to all sorts of people in all kinds of environments and places, I'm positively and definitely certain that I can't.

Obviously cognitive ability can be tested for.

Well yeah - we can identify brain death and cognitive disorders. Beyond that though, we're down to testing the capacity to solve tests.

Besides, the g factor is so well sourced that no expert in a relevant field doubts its predictive validity.

Validity for what, though?

If a trait increases the reproductive success of individuals carrying it, it will do better than its competition and spread throughout the population.

And this is the core of the issue. It's not how selection works. Consider once again your own example with moths, and ask yourself: "what traits were under selection in that case, and what about all the others?" It might be that you'll finally come across the concept of limiting factor.

You are aware that even within a species, the individual genes compete against each other by cooperating to create best-fit individuals that then breed these genes into the next generation? Competition implies losers.

But in any given selection event, most traits do not compete. They do not even participate. Consider a plague. We can have smart individuals, small individuals, strong individuals, huge individuals, well-hearing individuals, aggressive individuals, docile individuals, sexually-attractive individuals, keen-eyed individuals, agile individuals, and immune individuals. Which ones will be able to achieve a reproductive success in a lethal plague? And if you consider plague to be too specific of a selection event - I'd invite you to consider your own moths. I'll invite you to consider a keene-eyed gazelle with excellent digestion and wonderful immunity that cannot run fast enough. I'll invite you to consider a remarkably intelligent blue whale with a plankton allergy. A male parrot that finds fruit better than any of it's pals but is worse than all of them in mating dances. I'll invite you to consider that you don't understand how selection happens. Organisms that are passing selection are not gaining multiplier buffs to how successful they are and how much they will breed from traits that can be considered beneficial in any given environment. They all face selection factors. They either pass those or they don't, with some random chance involved. It doesn't matter how many cute advantages for all sorts of situations an individual has when it hits a wall. It's always a very specific wall. The individual has to be good enough at scaling that specific wall or he fails selection. Until he has scaled that particular wall, no traits irrelevant to that wall will matter in any capacity. Once it is scaled, that trait no longer matters if it won't help the individual to scale the next one.

To gain a reproductive advantage over competitors, an individual has to gain a trait that very specifically allows it to deal with a specific obstacle that said competitors fail. Otherwise it would have no effect on reproductive success at all.

Ok, that's a plausible starting point. But how did we get from average 80IQ to average 100?

By making different tests.

There is no magical cut-off point at which the brain stops evolving.

Well there is - at the point where having a structurally different brain no longer gives and individual any reproductive advantage, and rather gives him disadvantages.

Well, the genes that give those bipeds the ability to apply splints, for one.

I agree wholeheartedly that lacking any intelligence is a trait under strong negative selection even today. That would be stabilizing seletion, though.

There should still be a selective pressure for applying improved splints better as that would mean an advantage against the smoothbrains with their primitive splints.

Why? You applied many splints in your life? Or do you have other people do it for you? Do you consider yourself to be a smoothbrain compared to those people?

I really don't understand why you insist on civilization neutralizing evolution so much. It makes no sense at all.

Hear that barely-audible, high-pitched trembling sound? That's a tiny little part of your worldview showing cracks as it faces trouble finding more confirmation bias to sustain itself. It is unlikely to pass memetic selection. It will probably be replaced by a different set of memes sooner or later, all without involving your individual genetic peculiarities. Completely normal phenomenon, I assure you.

Yet the deaf are still being disadvantaged in the reproductive competition against the non deaf.

Do they? Do they actually have fewer children on average?

Well, no. As the state of society depends on the genes of the population.

I thought we had Kopachikha's example for that one.

A population that is genetically more inclined to be cooperative will see less physical strife within it.

Would it though? How much do you think the genetic inclination of American indigenous peoples towards or against cooperation affect the physical strife they ended up facing? Were it Kopachikha's genes inherited by one of her daughters, my great-grandmother, that decided that said daughter would spend the better part of her childhood without a father, starving in an unfamiliar city under siege? Were it similar genes for the other half a billion people across hundreds of societies who got to share the experience with some variations? What exact genetic predispositions determined the nature of Cold War? Where exactly are we supposed look for the effects of genetic inclinations towards cooperation in those historic processes?

The amount by which genes influence society doesn't really matter. If it's as low as 10%, that would still see a selection for beneficial genes over time. All the degree of influence does is change how severely those genes will be selected for.

It would be like that - if selection worked completely differently from how it does.

Nobody credible estimates an influence of genes under 30%.

Influence of what genes, and on what, though?

Yeah, well, obviously the civilizational attainment of mankind depends on a lot of factors not directly related to intelligence. Yet the genes that enable us to have these societies are the necessary foundation that has to be there for other factors to begin to work. So in a way, the science and education was made possible by the genes. Without them, no amount of education could create modern society.

I agreed wholeheartedly with you already that genetically-determined traits of human species predetermine the existence of foundation of human mode of existence. But that's not exactly the same thing

I never claimed that technological progress is universal to different societies. Just that the laws of physics upon which technological progress is based are universal. Which means that a universal understanding of say gravity is possible.

Well, at least it's gravity and not toasters this time around.

A person can have more than one child. Not every child gets the same genes from their parents. Which means that a single person can (theoretically) pass on all their genes to the next generation. Thus, variance is not bottlenecked by a low number of males.

I admit that linking openintro statistics was a mistake on my part. And I don't want to offend you by suggesting an elementary-school explanation of probabilities. We'll have to do it manually.

Now, consider - what is the difference between a maximum theoretical proportion of alleles passed on by a female Loroi to her daughters as their number approaches infinity, and the average proportion of alleles passed on by an average Loroi mother to her average number of children? What is the relation between the probability of any Loroi mother passing on HER mother's genes to her daughters and passing on HER father's genes to those very daughters?

Loroi are great for retaining the traits that they already possess, and awful for developing new ones.

Not really. You have to consider that genes can also be passed on by relatives carrying the same genes.

We don't just consider it - it's the whole issue. Literally, most Loroi being much closer relatives than humans are due to having a proportionally much shorter list of fathers to pick from. Even before considering that the list of mothers also leaves a lot to be desired in terms of size.

As for your calculation that results in a single gene being passed on to the grandchild generation only at a very low chance, that's the kind of chance evolution constantly takes.

Of course. You just have to remember that the whole point is evolution, if we assume it to happen, has to take drastically lower chances for Loroi compared to humans, simply because of the interaction between naturally produced variance, their sex ratio, and very basic mathematics.

You also fail to take into account that particularly succesful genes will be at a big advantage compared to the competition.

For starters - what would make the absence of HHGR a big advantage?
And secondly - well, if we take your assumptions, wouldn't they be big advantages among humans as well? Making this point utterly pointless? And more significantly, wouldn't they be an even bigger advantage among humans given that both males and females had to face internal competition in humans, while all it takes from a Loroi male to reproduce is... capacity to breath and ejaculate? And it's the males that get to really spread it?

Especially in a martial species, warlords and other elite fighters will see an inordinate amount of success.

It merely takes to assume that those successes are determined by said warrior's blood, and nothing else.

You're essentially arguing that the two first generations are dicy for a new gene.

No, that is not what I'm arguing. I'm arguing that every generation is dicy for every allele (you seem to have problems with that word for some reason) that is less frequent than others.

Yet the Loroi have a lot of advantages to help new genes along. For one, every successful female has one or two centuries to breed.

It was specifically stated by Arioch that female fertility takes a nosedive with age.

Loroi are also very healthy and a social species, which means low numbers of infant mortality. They also quickly reach the age of maturity, meaning beneficial genes can give their reproductive advantages more frequently.

That doesn't have any effect on the issue at all.

There is also the chance that the gene spreads to a male. One in twenty, from which point the gene likely gets quickly multiplied into the hundreds.

Indeed. Now, if only a rare gene had a higher chance to spread to a male than all the rare ones for this distinction to matter...

Can be. Genes are constantly competing against each other. The more gene variations there are, the fiercer the competition. Btw, 500 individual humans are considered enough to form a stable breeding population. As in, the rate of genetic change occuring in 500 people is enough to offset inbreeding.

I wish I understood the point you are trying to get across here. I really tried to see what any of those statements have to do with lower informational capacity of 1 genome compared to 10 genomes and I failed.

You also massively overestimate the number of different genes that code for a specific trait.

You have a huge, huge problem with the concept of "allele". You seem to conflate it with the concept of gene. That would also explain why you can't understand inheritance probabilities and the concept of loci. Should I explain the difference between a gene, an allele and a locus?

A lot of traits hinge on less than twenty genes. Even if we take a trait like intelligence, which is estimated to have several hundred genes affecting it, that many genes can comfortably fit into several hundred people. The Loroi would also have quickly increased their numbers once the eco-system permitted it. Thus solving their bottleneck issue.

(sigh)

A gene is a unit of hereditary information. Except in some viruses, genes are made up of DNA, a complex molecule that codes genetic information for the transmission of inherited traits. Alleles are also genetic sequences, and they too code for the transmission of traits. So, what it is the difference between a gene and an allele?

At least you're starting to realize that there IS a bottleneck issue.

The short answer is that an allele is a variant form of a gene. Explained in greater detail, each gene resides at a specific locus (location on a chromosome) in two copies, one copy of the gene inherited from each parent. The copies, however, are not necessarily the same. When the copies of a gene differ from each other, they are known as alleles. A given gene may have multiple different alleles, though only two alleles are present at the gene’s locus in any individual.
[/quote]

Females can have more than one daughter. For the spread of their genes it doesn't really matter whether there are a thousand or 10 males available.

Unfortunately, females having more than one daughter will not give any of those daughters a bigger pool of fathers. I just explained multiple times how the pool of fathers would matter.

It doesn't really matter for the rate of change whether the Lorois starting genes were diverse or limited

Indeed, which is why your argument about original population size was completely pointless. I'm proud that you've got there by yourself.

You're likely the only person on the planet that thinks being hot doesn't aid you inhaving lots of children. Good looks help you in almost everything you do in life, including acquiring wealth in goats or dollars. They definitely help you to find a partner with good genes themselves, increasing the potential quality of your offspring.

You're still mixing up "getting laid" and "having lots of children". Try not thinking about all the people you know that make you jealous, and instead think of all the people you know that have way too many children for your tastes. The reproductively-successful ones are the latter ones, not the former ones.

The capacity to alter our diet is dependent on genetic factors. If only because those genetic factors have a huge influence on our available means.

You should try sticking to your guns instead of backing off to genetic factor's role in the intelligence being possible every time you're losing footing.

Even if the influence is small, it's still there and thus affects genetic change over time.

But again, this is not how selection works. It's how you want it to work.

Btw, malnourished women don't have a lot of healthy children. They usually get them when they're not malnourished.

Who said anything about them being healthy?

Then why can Loroi have uncomplicated live births and lactate?

Indeed, why can they? What is the simplest and most reasonable explanation that we can come down to, while excluding deliberate inclusion and yet considering the role of the template? Could it be... conservative holdover from the template?

Considering the Big 5 Personality traits, at a minimum I'd expect them to be far lower in trait neuroticism

Can we get back to phrenology? That way we can enjoy at least some degree of the scientific method in our approaches.

the PCA grid

God... Alright. There's an important distinction - it's not that we can, it's that 4chan think's it can. Those are not the same. If you are willing to listen, I can explain to you what principal component analysis is and how it works.

Btw, if we agree that Loroi look similar in large part to the comics art style, then that massively lessens the outward similarity between us and them.

Good thing I'm not building my argument on the shapes of their skulls, then.

[Werra]

But the outcome is the same, even if it's not quite lactose.

It's the same when it's different. Sure.

Umiak don't even have most behavioural social functions that we could recognize as such by this point.

That's entirely your own headcanon.

Pol, if their mode of living in any way resembles terran Cetaceans, would typically not see each other when they communicate.

Just google "dolpin school".

And even those that possess all the necessary tools are most likely to evolve languages that are different from intrinsic humanoid body language.

The Loroi do have the same tools for body languages we have, so their range of possible expression is limited to something we humans would recognize. Also, human body langauge itself is quite diverse. By your own standards you would find non human body language amongst human examples.

Even though natural human body language would be so utterly useless in their new purpose, and it is by itself such an ambiguous and flawed signal system.

And in the Soia period, the absolute majority of Loroi that are of any use for Soia would perform duties that don't quite mix well with pregnancy. Never mind that industrial roles were most probably filled by other species, in no small similarity to how it largely is currently in the Union, except one could expect even less civilian Loroi back in the Soia period.

We don't know shit about what the actual function of the Loroi was for the Soia. But let's say they were the Soias primary warrior species. Then it would still be useful to have that species be able to breed on its own without energy expenditure of industrial facilities.

That is a most daring proposal. How indeed do space warriors benefit from aesthetically enjoying the beauty of harmless and useless things?

You want some examples? Well, okay, first of, a sense of aesthetics is important when it comes to a shared identity, which is vital for military units. It also helps navigating the world, as, for example, finding dirty spaces aesthetically unappealing is useful shorthand for prefering cleanliness. Go engage your own imagination for further examples.

But how would those things be adaptations for individuals who are not even meant to function as individuals, but rather as things, and with those things being best described as "weapons"?

You're making the mistake to believe that sapience can't enhance a killing machine.

And those two species are far closer genetically than humans and Loroi.

That is a daring claim.

It's really not. Loroi and humans very likely share zero genes with each other. If they do share them, the Lorois gene expression still is radically different from our own.

We're circling the drain here, but that's really not a short amount of time.

it is.

We can see a lot of genetic changes inbetween human populations that must have happened within the past 100k years. 300.000 years is more than that.

Just compare the differences in dog breeds which have been achieved in less than a tenth of that timespan. Or in horse breeding, which have been domesticated for less time than dogs and who take longer to reach sexual maturity.

You might have missed it, but the Loroi have been practicing eugenics and breeding for several thousand years by now.

A different shape of the nose is not exactly the same as a different layout of core brain structures.

Everything evolved but the brain...

The process of evolution does not necessarily require new traits to appear. Just selective pressure to effect a change in the population.

So close, yet so far away! Consider for a moment - did that species emerge from an individual that was all-brown? Or all-white? Or both at the same time?

Evolution is the process how, not that new species emerge.

FsT distances

Don't care about your wall of text. Taxonomy is a human system to categorize nature and due to the nature of biology, clear categories are very difficult to find. So nothing of what I said originally was questionable. Your effort to define some species as "false species" is just that, a lot of effort.

You shoul/d/ know better than to claim convergence based on sexual attraction.

Oh, but Tilefucker's love was forever unrequited, which is at odds with my proposal.

Like I can't find thousands of examples in which the feelings were reciprocal. Or like you are serious in your claim that this would be impossible with Neridi/humans.

Just because Loroi males don't have to react like a human male to one stimulus doesn't mean they necessarily react differently to all other stimuli. Besides, we don't know yet how they react. Could be that they do react peculiarly.

Now that's an assumption, and one that has issues with some items in Occam's shaving kit.

It really doesn't. All I'm saying is that just because A = B, C is not necessarily D. Or that C can't equal A.

Have you just called people with a weird laugh or sense of humour non human?

We recognize weird laughter as laughter still. Not so with Umiak.

For like half a minute until we learn what sound Umiak make when they laugh.

Yet we can still tell their mood.

Not instinctively though - we learn that waggling tail means a dog is happy.

Like we learn human body language too? Reading people is a skill that can be learned and improved upon.

Or they could just, you know, not bother diddling with function that already performs adequately in the templeate, as they did with countless other things.

The Soia had to diddle with every aspect, as the genes needed an extensive rework. That means potentially all of the bodies functions could have come out differently. That is assuming that the genes were even copied directly.

Now answer me this. If two traits are 50/50 in a species and one trait starts becoming dominant, going up to 80/20, is that evolution?

Consider the example of Crocodilus experimentalis again.

Unless you're talking about a tiny population, then changes in frequency of gene expression constitute a clear evolutionary pressure. If it's a tiny population, then there is still evolution happening, even if it gets reversed later, as the frequency of gene expression did change too. Your example says nothing.

2.My interpretation of Scotts book is not flawed in this point. He makes it pretty clear.

You do realize that I can actually read it in a day or two, right?

Then quote me where my interpretation is wrong. Go on.

Don't you forget to mention how I'm ruggedly handsome as well.

I was lying in an attempt to butter you up to easier swallow my argument.

Very easily - by not applying any new selectors on genes, and applying them on memes instead.

Memes become their own selectors, you dummy.

1. That predisposition for an individual to make a living as a thinking men is genetically hereditary.

If not, then chimpanzees could do it too.

Certainly. Getting opposable thumbs was also extremely beneficial for huminids aat one point - but I don't see you applying a ruler to anyone's palms now, in search of people whose thumbs are even more opposable, granting them further advantage against the lesser races.

You are making the claim that the dexterity of the hand makes no difference on evolutionary. That's self evidently false.

As for the hellscape. Ask yourself this. Can you tell smart men from idiots?

Having talked to all sorts of people in all kinds of environments and places, I'm positively and definitely certain that I can't.

Liar.

Besides, the g factor is so well sourced that no expert in a relevant field doubts its predictive validity.

Validity for what, though?

Potential success at any task that is influenced by general cognitive ability.

If a trait increases the reproductive success of individuals carrying it, it will do better than its competition and spread throughout the population.

And this is the core of the issue. It's not how selection works. Consider once again your own example with moths, and ask yourself: "what traits were under selection in that case, and what about all the others?" It might be that you'll finally come across the concept of limiting factor.

Not getting eaten is a pretty big help in having offspring.

But in any given selection event, most traits do not compete.

Real life is made up of a countless number of selection events. Most of them quite soft, but they do add up over a lifetime. Don't reduce the reproductive success of an organism to whether or not it can survive a plaque. That organism still needs to navigate all the other days of its life.

There is no magical cut-off point at which the brain stops evolving.

Well there is - at the point where having a structurally different brain no longer gives and individual any reproductive advantage, and rather gives him disadvantages.

Ok, and? Nothing, because no joke, of course traits have drawbacks. That's why it's survival of the fittest. But, just because some traits of an organ can have drawbacks, doesn't mean evolution of an organ stops.

Well, the genes that give those bipeds the ability to apply splints, for one.

I agree wholeheartedly that lacking any intelligence

The most simplest splint you can imagine can surely be improved upon. So a species that just about manages the most basic version of a splint, can see a selection for the genetic aptitude for applying better ones. Your claim that there is this hugely important threshold, that once passed stops evolution of intelligence, is not tenable.

I really don't understand why you insist on civilization neutralizing evolution so much. It makes no sense at all.

Hear that barely-audible, high-pitched trembling sound? That's a tiny little part of your worldview showing cracks as it faces trouble finding more confirmation bias to sustain itself. It is unlikely to pass memetic selection. It will probably be replaced by a different set of memes sooner or later, all without involving your individual genetic peculiarities. Completely normal phenomenon, I assure you.

That sounded better in your head. I'll put this very plainly for you. Even if civilization manages to neutralize any and all outside selectors, then the species would still be affected by evolution. Why? Because traits compete with each other.

Well, at least it's gravity and not toasters this time around.

It was never toasters, but the physics by which toasters function.

A person can have more than one child. Not every child gets the same genes from their parents. Which means that a single person can (theoretically) pass on all their genes to the next generation. Thus, variance is not bottlenecked by a low number of males.

I admit that linking openintro statistics was a mistake on my part. And I don't want to offend you by suggesting an elementary-school explanation of probabilities. We'll have to do it manually.

None of your statistical musings refute anything about the number of males not being a bottleneck for genetic diversity.

Of course. You just have to remember that the whole point is evolution, if we assume it to happen, has to take drastically lower chances for Loroi compared to humans, simply because of the interaction between naturally produced variance, their sex ratio, and very basic mathematics.

That's wrong. You calculate a percentage chance to pass on a trait based on the average number of children for each Loroi women to keep their population numbers steady. You disregard that the Lorois numbers can be growing and that the average number of children does not exclude single females from having many more children. You also do not take into account that Loroi have a longer period of fertility than humans and a lower child mortality rate.

Especially in a martial species, warlords and other elite fighters will see an inordinate amount of success.

It merely takes to assume that those successes are determined by said warrior's blood, and nothing else.

Well, I dunno, daughters of Teidar have a higher chance to also be able to crush their enemies with their minds. Seems pretty clear to me.

Loroi are also very healthy and a social species, which means low numbers of infant mortality. They also quickly reach the age of maturity, meaning beneficial genes can give their reproductive advantages more frequently.

That doesn't have any effect on the issue at all.

Less infant mortality, quick reproduction, long lifespans...no influence on reproduction at all.

I wish I understood the point you are trying to get across here. I really tried to see what any of those statements have to do with lower informational capacity of 1 genome compared to 10 genomes and I failed.

The point is, that the genes very quickly make copies of themselves, thus solving the issue of low population number. You assume that every individual from a population has their unique set of genes, when truth is, that there are duplicates of almost every gene running around. That is, because genes are in competition with each other, which limits the number of different genes active within a population.

You're likely the only person on the planet that thinks being hot doesn't aid you inhaving lots of children. Good looks help you in almost everything you do in life, including acquiring wealth in goats or dollars. They definitely help you to find a partner with good genes themselves, increasing the potential quality of your offspring.

You're still mixing up "getting laid" and "having lots of children". Try not thinking about all the people you know that make you jealous, and instead think of all the people you know that have way too many children for your tastes. The reproductively-successful ones are the latter ones, not the former ones.

What does this attempt at an insult have to do with attractivity being an advantage in reproduction? Nothing. Your constant "gotchas" are tiring.

The capacity to alter our diet is dependent on genetic factors. If only because those genetic factors have a huge influence on our available means.

You should try sticking to your guns instead of backing off to genetic factor's role in the intelligence being possible every time you're losing footing.

I just explained how genetic factors play a role even in the selection of our diet. So if diet influences intelligence, then intelligence influences itself via the diet.

Btw, malnourished women don't have a lot of healthy children. They usually get them when they're not malnourished.

Who said anything about them being healthy?

If they aren't healthy, their chances of reproduction will be depressed.

Considering the Big 5 Personality traits, at a minimum I'd expect them to be far lower in trait neuroticism

Can we get back to phrenology? That way we can enjoy at least some degree of the scientific method in our approaches.

Measure personality traits however you want, you will find consistent differences.

the PCA grid

God... Alright. There's an important distinction - it's not that we can [pinpoint the genetic origins]

How do you explain the precision we can reach with genetic testing? Please post only those concerns that aren't answered by Lewontins fallacy. Engage your own faculties.

[gaerzi]

All this discussion on parallel evolution is fascinating especially for the format where every sentence of one's post must be responded to by a paragraph so that we get an exponential growth in the length of the walls of text, but I think there are elements that have not been addressed yet. Namely, that the Loroi have two traits that distinguish them from natural evolution as we understand it.

1. They're an artificial species, genetically engineered from scratch, and templated after humanity. Who knows what this change or doesn't change? Nobody. Well, just one person actually, because of the second point:
2. The Loroi are fictional, created by a human author for a human audience. And notably as a result they should be assumed to be using human body language because that makes things easier for the author to draw and for the audience to interpret.

[Werra]

I know, what a riveting conversation.

For anybody following the discussion and who is curious about Against the Grain, the chapter I'm talking about starts on page 96 and ends on 115 in the physical copy I have.

One likely explanation for this paradox of apparent human progress in subsistence techniques together with long period of demographic stagnation is that, epidemiologically, this was perhabs the most lethal period in human history.

[V]irtually all the infectious diseases due to microorganisms specifically adapted to Homo Sapiens came into existence only in the past ten thousand years.[...] They were, in the strong sense, a "civilizational effect." [...] Until very recently they collectively represented the major overall cause of human mortality.

The density-dependent diseases afflicting the populations of the late-Neolithic multispecies [settlements] represented a new and rigorous selection pressure from pathogens never experienced by their ancestors.[...]Crowded populations developed a degree of immunity to many pathogens.[...]

The book's quite good and well worth a read. Most of it is about early states, to which the late-Neolithic is just a precursor.