SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Over at StatNews is a story on a recent trend where low cost commercial DNA testing is resulting in a number of White Nationalists taking genetic tests, and sometimes they don't like the results that come back.
The article looks at research on how they respond to the sometimes unexpected results:
[...] In a new study, sociologists Aaron Panofsky and Joan Donovan examined years' worth of posts on Stormfront to see how members dealt with the news.
[...] About a third of the people posting their results were pleased with what they found. "Pretty damn pure blood," said a user with the username Sloth. But the majority didn't find themselves in that situation. Instead, the community often helped them reject the test, or argue with its results.
Some rejected the tests entirely, saying that an individual's knowledge about his or her own genealogy is better than whatever a genetic test can reveal. [...] Others, he said, responded to unwanted genetic results by saying that those kinds of tests don't matter if you are truly committed to being a white nationalist. Yet others tried to discredit the genetic tests as a Jewish conspiracy "that is trying to confuse true white Americans about their ancestry," Panofsky said.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Friday August 18 2017, @05:20PM (4 children)
You misunderstand genetics. A mitochondiral analysis can tell you about your mother's mother's mother's .... people, and a y chromosome analysis can tell you about your father's father's father's ... people, but you've got 22 other chromosomes that tell different stories about their history, and just to make things interesting chromosomes occasionally split and rejoin. (Still, mitochondria and the y chromosome are so short that's not likely to happen in THOSE cases, though mitochondrial genes have very poor error correction.)
Everyone's a patchwork. If you go back around 3,000 years, everyone alive then is either the ancestor of everybody (outside of Africa?) or of nobody. And the comment about Africa is basically because that area hasn't been studied sufficiently. It's probably true including them also. Racial characteristics are superficial...and probably intentionally so. There's speculation that one of the reason people spread so is that many people feel uncomfortable around those that look different than they do. If so, then in past times those who are currently the "idiotic White Supremacists" would have been "those hardy pioneers venturing into new lands". And they might willingly accept a high mortality rate to live somewhere with only people like them. Perhaps Mars or the Moon. Unfortunately, that would also require a high technical ability and the ability to focus for a long time, something that is a separate evolutionary development, and one that most, but not all, of them conspicuously lack.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @06:27PM (1 child)
a couple of comments:
1. I was born in Romania. I sincerely doubt I have any native americans in my genetic background (not that I would be upset about it, I just find it unlikely). So your 3000 years comment isn't really true.
2. The only reason subgroups of people leave their "home" is because they don't have enough resources there. For instance hunter gatherers in Africa would have followed animal migration routes; at some point, when the tribe got too big and people started fighting over water, different subgroups are likely to have gone off in different directions, and then not want to come back together again.
While astronauts and Columbuses may themselves do it for the thrill, society funds their adventures, ultimately, because it wants to get more resources.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday August 19 2017, @06:25AM
I must have explained myself clumsily. What I meant was that there is an ancestor within that time period who is an ancestor of both you and of the people of the Americas. I didn't mean to imply that this ancestor lived in the Americas, OR that s/he lived in Romania. IIUC the most like site of the MRCA would be somewhere in the middle east, or even east of that.
Remember, you have two parents, four grand parents, eight great-grandparents, etc. Fairly quickly this number becomes larger than the number of people living on earth at that time. This is solved by multiple overlaps, but it still "quickly" becomes true that for any person that long ago, either everyone is descended from them or nobody is. (Note that this doesn't imply that even a single gene of that person was carried forwards, as those segregate at each generation, halving their contribution to each descendant. [Well, approximately halving...things are a bit more complex than that, but it's close.])
See Dawkins "The Ancestors Tale" for an explanation by someone who's better with words than I am.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Friday August 18 2017, @08:45PM (1 child)
"A mitochondiral analysis can tell you about your mother's mother's mother's .... people, and a y chromosome analysis can tell you about your father's father's father's ... people, "
Correct
"but you've got 22 other chromosomes that tell different stories about their history"
Incorrect. This is exactly where you are wrong. They do NOT tell stories about ancestry! Not with accuracy, at any rate.
They are the *result* of evolution, *not* a record of it. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
"If you go back around 3,000 years, everyone alive then is either the ancestor of everybody (outside of Africa?) or of nobody. And the comment about Africa is basically because that area hasn't been studied sufficiently. It's probably true including them also."
More ignorance. In fact the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) for humans is many many times further back than that. Mitochondrial eve (MRCA for females) was ~200k years ago (estimates vary but certainly in excess of 100k) while Y-Adam (MRCA for males) was ~250k years ago (again, estimates vary, but it's clearly over 200k.) The true MRCA for both sexes will obviously have to be prior to either of them. 3000 years? What kind of crackpot are you smoking?
"There's speculation that one of the reason people spread so is that many people feel uncomfortable around those that look different than they do."
Still confused. People do not necessarily do this. People DO tend to like faces that resemble those of their childhood caregivers, but that's not the same thing. A black kid adopted by a loving family of blue-eyed blondes would prefer faces like those of his family, not his own, for instance. And frankly I think it's silly to pretend this childhood programming leads directly to adult racism - only in people that fail to grow up does this lead to anything more than wistful poems about Mothers Love.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday August 19 2017, @06:16AM
The most recent common ancestor along which path? The mitochondria are only one of numerous paths taken. The blood type separation goes back to before when we split from the chimpanzees. But when I say "most recent common ancestor" I'm counting ancestry along any of the chromosomes...and it's no where near as far back. Read Dawkin's "The Ancestor's Tale" for a better explanation of what I mean.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.