New Studies Find Diversity's Mostly Negative Correlates

As found on gnxp, Galor and Ashraf's new paper researches the data to find a curve in which they say: "genetic diversity has [...] a detrimental effect on social capital and a beneficial effect on the knowledge frontier." The first finding, of negative diversity-value, is the one which comes from the overwhelming number of data points that they have. This could have been reported as its own linear correlation, but that wouldn't be pro-diversity, would it? By a remarkable straining of the global data, they twist a curve all the way around through an "optimal diversity" range which is flat, as utterly trendless data scatter would be, then a lopped-off range where supposedly genetic diversity acquires discernible positive value. This is theorized to occur from Serial Founder Effects, which in stepwise manner, at intervals of thousands of miles sometimes, a hard reduction of genetic diversity occurs. Then, with data points from North and South America, they extend that curve into a symmetrical downslope, but there isn't any pronounced trend for the farther southern countries to have much less population density in 1500 than the closer northern ones. Serial founder effects were to have culled genetic diversity at intervals of at least every few thousand miles, though. The entire new world may be getting treated as a bloc of low genetic diversity, and as one of low population density, their variable to be explained.
This does not support the pro-diversity conclusion, that "knowledge frontiers" are enhanced by genetic diversity as such. Wouldn't that mean that volume of accumulated mutations was itself the favorable circumstance for upbuilding "knowledge frontiers", that is, the quantity of them, rather than the quality? Highly mutagenic environments though are not good for quality, while the less mutagenic ones, such as many northern lands, seem long to have been favorable for high intelligence and the other precursors of blooming "knowledge frontiers".
In any case, Japan registers as the high point of "optimal diversity" on their curve, and it's hard to present that sort of example as pro-diversity, by any modern notion of what is high and low diversity on the scale of great nations.
Transitioning to the subject of the last post: basing the new world results on population estimates of 1500 introduces huge unreliability, though the authors say they're using McEvedy and Jones 1978, which I have. At first glance, they could hardly be doing so consistently, and if they're not, that allows for mixing in some wild New Left 'scholarship' as discussed below.
Added 7-17-08 from: Wednesday, July 16, 2008
These two posts go together, as they do both hinge on the relevant population size estimates.
A Revealing Feature Of Official Anti-Caucasianism...
is the gross exaggerration of aboriginal populations' size in pre-contact times. One million indians in the conterminous U.S., are said by suborned scholars to have been 10 million. Several milllion Mexican indians are said to have been tens of millions before Cortez. Several hundred thousand Australian aborigines are said by the New Left propaganda-slinging scholars to have been millions, in the 18th century. These lies are told, by those who know that they are lying, to promote and support official anti-caucasianism. The message they hope to put over, is that whites are genetically predisposed to exterminate other populations. This is their answer to those who would speak of official anti-caucasianism as injustice and tending towards exterminationist policies, given in advance. It also functions as a provocation, to allow for attempted smearing of those who would take offense. Government schools which are that far sunk in depravity , need to be put down, privatized and their staffs cashiered.
[Added 7-18-08] While I believe that official anti-Caucasianism is a tool to win power, a tool which would be discarded, if democratic procedures were abolished, another interpretation is here: The burden of our past
Added 8-12-08 from here: Saturday, August 9, 2008

"Being diverse and irrelevant is easy"
...which is a quote from Scott E. Page's book The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies . If it's easy to be diverse and irrelevant, that means value-irrelevant, or not? The point would seem to have been missed, as to whether diversity itself can ever be a proper value. If the question were: how may the 'power of PRO-diversity' create something of real and lasting value, there would be no opening left for equivocations like having a section entitled "How Diversity Trumps Ability: Fun at Caltech". If one is going to try to argue for diversity-value, finding it at Caltech, which currently enrolls 0-1% blacks for years on end, this glosses over the whole point of being pro-diversity; which is to not set minimum standards so high that some large parts of the population, such as races, do not get to register their 'diversity-value'. Doing diversity the Caltech way, would be called anti-diversity, if it were applied to recruitment in a more general way. The gross equivocation and dishonesty is to have an incidental diversity that arises from most uncommonly high minimum standards, be allowed to stand in for diversity managed with quota recruitment. The two have no overlap; they are complete opposites.
Title found via: Econlog 8-6th-08
Added 8-12-08 from: Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Valuing Diversity Will Tend To Mean Valuing Indirectly The Parasite Diversity Which Ofttimes Gave Rise To It
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^_Religious diversity & pathogens_ Abstract"Why are religions far more numerous in the tropics compared with the temperate areas? We propose, as an answer, that more religions have emerged and are maintained in the tropics because, through localized coevolutionary races with hosts, infectious diseases select for three anticontagion behaviours: in-group assortative sociality; out-group avoidance; and limited dispersal. These behaviours, in turn, create intergroup boundaries that effectively fractionate, isolate and diversify an original culture leading to the genesis of two or more groups from one. Religion is one aspect of a group's culture that undergoes this process. If this argument is correct then, across the globe, religion diversity should correlate positively with infectious disease diversity, reflecting an history of antagonistic coevolution between parasites and hosts and subsequent religion genesis. We present evidence that supports this model: for a global sample of traditional societies, societal range size is reduced in areas with more pathogens compared with areas with few pathogens, and in contemporary countries religion diversity is positively related to two measures of parasite stress."
quoted from: Assortative sociality, limited dispersal, infectious disease and the genesis of the global pattern of religion diversity
Corey L. Fincher, Randy Thornhill...who also gave us this:
Proc. R. Soc. B doi: 10.1098/rspb.2008.0094
Pathogen prevalence predicts human cross-cultural variability in individualism/collectivism
Corey L. Fincher, Randy Thornhill, Damian R. Murray, Mark Schaller
Abstract: Pathogenic diseases impose selection pressures on the social behaviour of host populations."In humans (Homo sapiens), many psychological phenomena appear to serve an antipathogen defence function. One broad implication is the existence of cross-cultural differences in human cognition and behaviour contingent upon the relative presence of pathogens in the local ecology. We focus specifically on one fundamental cultural variable: differences in individualistic versus collectivist values. We suggest that specific behavioural manifestations of collectivism (e.g. ethnocentrism, conformity) can inhibit the transmission of pathogens; and so we hypothesize that collectivism (compared with individualism) will more often characterize cultures in regions that have historically had higher prevalence of pathogens. Drawing on epidemiological data and the findings of worldwide cross-national surveys of individualism/collectivism, our results support this hypothesis: the regional prevalence of pathogens has a strong positive correlation with cultural indicators of collectivism and a strong negative correlation with individualism. The correlations remain significant even when controlling for potential confounding variables. These results help to explain the origin of a paradigmatic cross-cultural difference, and reveal previously undocumented consequences of pathogenic diseases on the variable nature of human societies." Link These abstracts were found at Dienekes anthropology
Isn't it to be expected then, that the tendency from additional immigration cohorts, of the tropical-adapted, will be destructive of individualism, community of values and of larger loyalties generally. These are lines of evidence further converging, on a larger understanding of what official pro-diversity is about. It is not about how to preserve or enhance freedom from the aggrandizement of power over against the citizenry; that much should be clear.