Tag: history

A 60-Year-Old Book Review

A review of the 1966 Wistar Symposium about which I have written in Probability Zero:

Evolution: What Is Required of a Theory?
Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution.

A symposium, Philadelphia, April 1966.

The idea of this symposium is supposed to have originated from a discussion at two picnics in Switzerland, when four mathematicians, Schutzenberger, Ulam, Weisskopf, and Eden, had a discussion with the biologists Kaplan and Koprowski on mathematical doubts concerning the Darwinian theory of evolution. After heated debates it was proposed “that a symposium be arranged to consider the points of dispute more systematically, and with a more powerful array of biologists who could function adequately in the universe of discourse inhabited by the mathematicians.“ During the course of the symposium further heat was generated.

It is not easy to summarize the case made by the mathematicians,(1) which involves both the challenge that computer simulation of evolution shows evolutionary theory to be inadequate and a complaint that the biologist has not provided sufficient information for efficient computer simulation. Eden was particularly concerned with the clement of randomness which is claimed to provide the mutational variation upon which evolution depends. “No currently existing formal language,” he contends, “can tolerate random changes in the symbol sequences which express its sentences. Meaning is almost invariably destroyed. Any changes must be syntactically lawful ones.” He therefore conjectures that “what one might call ‘genetic grammaticality’ has a deterministic explanation and docs not owe its stability to selection pressure acting on random variation.” He points out that attempts to provide for computer learning by random variation have been unsuccessful, and that an adequate theory of adaptive evolution would supply a computer programmer with a correct set of ground rules.

Schutzenberger takes a more extreme position. Arguing that all genetic information should consist of a rather limited set of words in an alphabet of 20-odd letters—in which evolution is typographical change—he finds a need for algorithms “in which the very concept of syntactic correctness has been incorporated.” He compares this “syntactic topology” with the “phenotypic topology” of organisms as physical objects in space-time, and a major part of his challenge to neo-Darwinian theory is “the present lack of a conceivable mechanism which would insure within an interesting range the faintest amount of matching between the two topologies. . . an entirely new set of rules is needed to obtain the sort of correspondence which is assumed to hold between neighbouring phenotypes. . .“

A major part of the biologists’ answer to this challenge was in the claim that the neo-Darwinian theory used in computer models, based on the Haldane-Fisher-Wright interpretation of 1920-1930, misses out those forces which lead to continuing evolution, such as continued environmental change, the heterogeneous environment, epigenetic organization of phenotypes, and the progressive elaboration of the types of mutation possible. (2) Waddington presented the main elements of a theory of phenotypes involving canalized processes of development (with switching mechanisms), the heritability of developmental responses to environmental stimuli, and a principle of “Archetypes,” inbuilt characteristics of an evolving group which determine the directions in which evolutionary change is especially easy. Realistic models would need to build in these elements.(3) Many of the papers by biologists in this volume are peripheral(4) to the theme stated by the mathematicians, providing an accompaniment of sophisticated evolutionary theory rather than a counterpoint to the mathematical challenge.

Most biologists are satisfied with a theory that can be tested and that proves predictive. It is a different challenge to a theory that it should have an effective working model, for failure may imply either imperfection in the theory or imperfection in the model. It is doubtful whether this symposium has done much to influence the theory of evolution; it may have done much to improve future models.

It must have been tremendous fun to attend this symposium, but the full record of argument and interruption is very irritating to at least one reader. An interchange between speakers which runs X “No,” Y “No, no,” X “O.K. let’s waste time,” Y “We understand the question,” Z “The answer is no” surely needs no record in the literature of science. The short pre- and post-conference papers included in the volume arc excellent succinct expressions of points of view, but much of the main text reads like a word-for-word record of a heckled political meeting. This may be a useful way to discuss problems in science; it is not the way to publish them.

John L. Harper

School of Plant Biology, University College of North Wales, Bangor

Uncle John’s Band added a few footnotes as commentary. I added a fourth one.

  1. As predicted by Probability Zero, the biologist reviewer struggles with mathematical arguments. They are well-summarized by Day.
  2. It isn’t an exaggeration to say the biological counterargument consisted of what was for all intents and purposes, magic. When they weren’t replying at all.
  3. Still no compulsion to, you know, do an experiment It’s all thoughts and fancies.
  4. Peripheral indeed. Peripheral was the polite way to say: they didn’t respond in any way, shape, or form to the mathematical criticism.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Legacy of Greenland

As I have often said, for all his undeniable shortcomings, and despite the very genuine doubts concerning who is playing his role in front of the cameras, President Trump is the second-greatest US President, after Andrew Jackson. And it’s true that if he succeeds in claiming Greenland for the USA, it will reflect very, very positively on his legacy over time:

If Donald Trump were to consummate a purchase of Greenland, he would almost certainly secure a place in both American and global history. Beyond the spectacle, the scale alone would be staggering. Greenland spans roughly 2.17 million square kilometers – making it comparable in size to the entire Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and larger than the 1867 Alaska Purchase. Fold that landmass into today’s United States and America’s total area would jump past Canada, placing the US second only to Russia in territorial size. In a system where size, resources, and strategic depth still matter, such a shift would be read around the world as an assertion of enduring American reach.

Prestige is only part of the story. Greenland sits astride the Arctic, where warming seas are reshaping trade routes and great‑power competition. It hosts critical radar and space‑tracking infrastructure and lies close to emerging maritime lanes and subsea resources. Its geology, long discussed for rare earths and other critical minerals, adds a layer of economic promise. For a president who measures success in visible, audacious strokes, the symbolism of converting a long‑mooted idea into a concrete map change would be irresistible – and historically resonant.

How would Trump be remembered at home if he pulled it off peacefully, through purchase? American memory tends to fix on outcomes, not process. The Louisiana Purchase is celebrated for doubling the young nation, not for the constitutional scruples it raised at the time. The Alaska Purchase, derided as “Seward’s Folly,” is now taught as strategic foresight. The sheer scale of Greenland would make it the single largest one‑time expansion of US territory, narrowly edging out Louisiana in raw area. That alone would place any president in the pantheon of consequential leaders; Trump would likely be discussed in the same breath as Jefferson and, by sheer magnitude of territorial change, alongside the transformative figures students learn first.

I think those who doubt that Trump is serious about claiming sovereignty over Greenland are failing to take this legacy aspect into account. History doesn’t care about borders, the international rule of law, or the modern pretensions about inviolable nature of political boundaries. It doesn’t even care much about whether a man is regarded as good, bad, or stupid in his own time.

The best way to look at it is if this move will benefit President Trump personally in some way, and considering the way in which it will seal his historic importance, I don’t see him backing down on it short of a direct order from whomever he serves.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Logic Holds

If we can suspend the constitution in its entirety over a 99.999% survivable virus, we can suspend it to expel all the Somalis and the Democrats facilitating their welfare and election scams.

Without question. Furthermore, the Somalis, naturalized or not, have no Constitutional rights as Americans. The Constitution was written to protect the rights of the Posterity of the Founding Fathers of the American Revolution. Regardless of what immigrant judges may have declared over the years, no one else resident in the USA has any claim to any rights protected by the U.S. Constitution.

You can point horse and say cow all you like, but that doesn’t make the horse a cow.

DISCUSS ON SG

Never More Blessed

There are two historical schools of thought regarding the presence of a certain tribe. The Christian Zionists assure us that blessing that tribe and treating it well assures divine blessings and prosperity. The antisemites, on the other hand, vociferously insist that there are extremely good reasons that tribe has been forcibly evicted from 112 nations and counting, and why so many people around the world have learned to fear and hate them. Indeed, we are repeatedly informed that there has never been more global antisemitism than today. But regardless of which side happens to have the more historically accurate narrative going for it, it appears the USA is going to find out one way or the other in the 21st century.

It looks as if prosperity has got to be right around the corner. Or else something very bad.

DISCUSS ON SG

Darwin and the Black Death

As it happens, Genghis Khan is not the only historical proof of the Mathematical Impossibility of The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. Another very effective one is the Black Death, which left an observable mark on the genes of the descendants of those Europeans who survived it.

The CCR5-delta32 mutation is a 32-base-pair deletion in the CCR5 gene that, among other effects, confers significant resistance to HIV infection. This mutation is found almost exclusively in European populations, where it currently exists in approximately 10% of the population. Its geographic distribution and the nature of the selective pressure it confers have led scientific researchers to propose that it was positively selected during the Black Death pandemic of 1347-1351.

For our purposes, the precise historical cause of the mutation’s selection is less important than the observed rate of its historical propagation. What we know with certainty is that this mutation currently exists at approximately 10% frequency in European populations after roughly 27-34 generations, depending on the assumed generation length and the precise date of the selective event. Even using the most generous assumptions, using a starting frequency higher than a single individual, and permitting selection pressure from multiple historical events, the mutation remains far from fixation after nearly 700 years.

This means that a mutation providing resistance to a disease that killed between 30% and 60% of the European population, representing one of the strongest selective pressures in recorded human history, has only reached 10% frequency after roughly 30 generations. A linear extrapolation, which would be generous, as the rate of spread typically slows as a mutation approaches fixation due to diminishing selective advantage, shows that a Europe-wide fixation would require approximately 300 generations, or roughly 6,000-7,500 years.

This represents a fixation rate of approximately one mutation per 300 generations under extremely strong selective pressure within a geographically concentrated population. Compare this to the bacterial rate of one fixation per 1,600 generations. The human rate under optimal conditions is roughly five times faster than the bacterial rate, but only within a single continental population facing existential selective pressure. On a species-wide basis, accounting for the global distribution of humans and the dilution effect of populations not subject to the same selective pressure, the effective fixation rate would be considerably slower. Even if we grant the most favorable possible scenario to the Neo-Darwinians and assume:

  1. The highest estimate of dead Europeans at 50 million.
  2. The strongest selection pressure at 60 percent of the European population dead.
  3. The highest European percentage of the smallest global population, at 35.7 percent of the total human population of 350 million.
  4. The application of the same selective pressure on the non-European populations not exposed to the Black Death.

The shift from a European perspective to a global one that accounts for the entire human race increases the number of generations for fixation required to 840 generations and the time required to 16,800 years. Just dropping the estimated number of dead to the lower end of the range at 25 million and increasing the estimated global population to 400 million would push the generations required up to 1,440, and we still haven’t begun to account for the fact that the natural selection pressure would not be applicable to more than three-quarters of the total population.

The CCR5-delta32 example thus provides our first empirical data point: even under the strongest selective pressure ever observed in human history, mutations propagate through human populations at rates slower, not faster, than bacterial fixation in laboratory conditions.

DISCUSS ON SG

America is for Everyone

Except Americans and the Europeans who look like them:

There is a peculiar pathology that afflicts white Americans and white Europeans alone among all the peoples of the earth. It is the belief that identity politics is beneath them; that engaging in explicit ethnic advocacy is somehow shameful, distasteful, or morally compromised. They have been taught to believe that the highest virtue is to transcend their own identity, to judge everyone as individuals, to refuse to see patterns or advocate for their own collective interests. Meanwhile, every other group on the planet organizes along ethnic lines, advances ethnic interests, and celebrates ethnic identity without a shred of guilt or hesitation.

This is not a sustainable arrangement. It is, in fact, a formula for extinction.

Let us be clear about what is actually happening in America and throughout the Western world. This is how politics works. It is how it has always worked. Every major demographic group except one practices explicit identity politics. They have advocacy organizations, legal defense funds, congressional caucuses, scholarships, hiring preferences, and media outlets dedicated to advancing their collective interests. They vote as blocs. They network and hire their own. They celebrate their heritage and teach their children to be proud of who they are. None of this is controversial. None of it is condemned. It is understood as natural, healthy, and good.

Black Americans have the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus, Black Entertainment Television, historically black colleges, and an entire cultural infrastructure devoted to black advancement. When they advocate for their collective interests, they are celebrated as civil rights heroes continuing a noble legacy. When black politicians openly say they will represent “their people,” no one blinks.

Jewish Americans have the ADL, AIPAC, the American Jewish Committee, and countless other organizations devoted to Jewish identity, Jewish continuity, and Jewish interests. Jewish in-group preference in academia, media, finance, and law is well-documented and openly discussed in Jewish publications. When Jewish groups advocate for Israel or against “antisemitism,” they are exercising ethnic solidarity and no one is permitted to criticize it.

Hispanic Americans have La Raza (now UnidosUS), the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and an entire political movement built around ethnic identity and ethnic interests. When Hispanic activists openly advocate for more immigration from Latin America to increase Hispanic political power, this is considered legitimate political organizing.

Asian Americans have their own advocacy organizations, their own congressional caucus, their own identity-based scholarships and hiring networks. When Asian parents organize to oppose policies that disadvantage their children, they are exercising ethnic advocacy.

Only one group is forbidden from doing any of this.

I don’t disagree with anything that Torba points out here. But it’s important to remember, and to understand, that the reason this has taken place is because the immigrants – the Germans, the Irish, the Swedes, the Jews – all wanted to be able to feel like they were true blue original Americans no different than the Heritage Americans, the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution, the Posterity of Plymouth Rock and the Founding Fathers.

And they weren’t. They were never part of the Posterity for whom the Constitution was written and whose rights it guarantees. The Constitution was never intended to protect the rights of every citizen, every resident, every tourist, or every human being on the planet. But since there was plenty of room in the New World, and since everyone didn’t see what harm it would do if everyone pretended to be the same in order to get along, civic nationalism was invented and gradually came to take the place of the real American nationalism.

So, keep in mind that if you’re a non-Posterity American, all that everyone else from Afghanistan to Somalia is doing is the same thing that you, your parents, and your grandparents have been doing for decades, which is pretending that they are Americans. The only real difference is that the cultures, religions, and ethnicities from which you came were similar enough to avoid open and immediate conflict. in the short term.

Even so, these cultural differences between the American nation and immigrants from the European nations were what led to the Civil War and the defeat of the South after the first great wave of immigration. The post-1965 wave is what will lead to what will either be civil war, mass remigration, collapse, or some combination of all three. But regardless of what happens, nothing will ever change the fact that America is a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant nation, and everyone else is just visiting it, or at most, playing tourist while some remnants of it still survive.

There will always be people called “Americans”. After all, Rome still survives as “Romania” to this day. But the modern Romanian is even less related to the Conscript Fathers of the Roman Senate than the average “American” today is related to the Founding Fathers of the American Revolution.

DISCUSS ON SG

Don’t Blame the Zoomers

They are right to be angry. They are right to be absolutely furious. GenX may be the first generation in US history to be worse off than its parents, but the Zoomers are considerably worse off and they are still aware of the echoes of peak US prosperity due to a) clueless Boomers booming and b) the evidence provided by television, books, and movies.

I will never own a home. My purpose is to provide value to my employer. I will move thousands of miles away from my family because there are no jobs left. I will become a meaningless cog in an uncaring machine. My income will be eaten up by taxes, rent, and car expenses. One-third of my life will be spent sleeping, the other third will be spent working. The last third will be mostly taken up by chores and errands. I will be too exhausted to do anything meaningful with what little precious free time I have left. I will visit my family once or twice a year, watching them slowly fade away from my life until they perish. I am living in the most prosperous time in human history.

We are rapidly approaching revolutionary times. The weak men of the Boomer era are creating the hard men of the Zoomer era.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Count to Zero

An honest review of childhood vaccinations will reduce the US vaccination schedule to zero. But the count to zero has to begin somewhere, and less is observably better than more, so this presidential order is a positive step forward:

In January 2025, the United States recommended vaccinating all children for 18 diseases, including COVID-19, making our country a high outlier in the number of vaccinations recommended for all children. Peer, developed countries recommend fewer childhood vaccinations — Denmark recommends vaccinations for just 10 diseases with serious morbidity or mortality risks; Japan recommends vaccinations for 14 diseases; and Germany recommends vaccinations for 15 diseases. Other current United States childhood vaccine recommendations also depart from policies in the majority of developed countries. Study is warranted to ensure that Americans are receiving the best, scientifically-supported medical advice in the world.

I hereby direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to review best practices from peer, developed countries for core childhood vaccination recommendations — vaccines recommended for all children — and the scientific evidence that informs those best practices, and, if they determine that those best practices are superior to current domestic recommendations, update the United States core childhood vaccine schedule to align with such scientific evidence and best practices from peer, developed countries while preserving access to vaccines currently available to Americans.

The corrupt scientists who are the shock troops of the pharmaceutical industry will fight this tooth and nail, of course. But they will lose, sooner or later, because every single person my age has personally witnessed the increasing amount of harm that the ever-growing number of vaccines given to children have unnecessarily wreaked upon the generations that followed us.

Vaccines are flat-out evil. They are definitely the root cause of “crib death”, SIDS, and autism. I strongly suspect they are also the cause of all the food allergies, gluten problems, and intestinal disorders that have been on the increase over the last few decades. They’re not even remotely necessary and they kill far more children than they save. All of the stories about how they “combat disease” are completely false and have been conclusively proven to be false. They are far more harmful than the diseases they are supposed to prevent.

The optimal way to protect Western societies from infectious disease is to a) invest in sewage and waste disposal systems, b) protect the clean water supply, c) end mass immigration and d) restrict travel from countries that don’t do (a) and (b). That will actually work, because that’s what worked in the early 20th century.

DISCUSS ON SG

What Democracies?

The primary Clown World justification for its relentless wars against sovereign nations around the world over the last 200 years doesn’t even exist. The so-called “liberal democracies” are neither liberal nor democratic.

Labour is facing fury today after it emerged more elections are being delayed amid dire polls for Keir Starmer. Four mayoral contests that were due to be held in May are being pushed back by two years, with accusations that the PM is ‘subverting democracy’ to ‘save his skin’.

Some 7.5million residents in Essex, Hampshire and the Solent, Sussex and Brighton, and Norfolk and Suffolk will not vote until 2028.

Ministers argue that more time is needed to finish reorganising local authorities in England.

But critics point out that Sir Keir is braced for a hammering in the local elections, as polls show his party trailing far behind Reform. Even Labour MPs voiced concerns, with former minister Jim McMahon saying the government had to be ‘better than this’. Battles in nine council areas, East Sussex, West Sussex, Essex, Thurrock, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Norfolk, Suffolk and Surrey have already been postponed from this year to 2026.

Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice this morning accused Sir Keir of ‘running scared’, swiping that ‘generally it’s dictators that cancel elections. Some 7.5 million people are now going to be denied the opportunity of voting in mayoral elections,’ he said.

‘Funny isn’t it, we’ve just announced our mayoral candidates for all of these areas and all of a sudden the Government, terrified of losing to Reform, are cancelling them.’

He added that a two-year delay ‘is a deliberate dictatorial cancelling of democracy in the United Kingdom and we shouldn’t tolerate it’.

The truth is that the “representative democracy” at which the trained media clowns bark and clap approvingly has always been an inversion of the actual concept of democracy. Everything from the constitutions and elections and judiciary systems are designed to limit democracy, to rein it in, and to prevent the will of the people from being enacted.

It’s a fundamentally dishonest system and it always has been. Now the veil is being torn, in the USA, in Ukraine, and in the UK, which is less a cause of Clown World’s systemic collapse than a consequence of it.

But it was always a lie.

There are a few genuine demi-democracies, where referendums actually consult the will of the entire electorate. But even those are strictly leashed by their “representative” and “judicial” elements, both of which are de facto anti-democratic. But “representative democracy” is no more democracy than “civic nationalism” is nationalism.

DISCUSS ON SG