Milk is Murder

Humans are a strange species for many reasons.  Among them, we drink milk our entire lives.  For some reason we continue to produce the enzyme which breaks down lactose.  The linked article demonstrates the strangeness of this and gives a few theories for why this mutation is evolutionarily advantageous, though there is no definitive answer.

Milk was not necessarily an advantage by itself.  That is to say, the milk may have offered no new nutrients, so it was not a better food source (particularly since the common milk derivatives such as yoghurt and cheese have most of the lactose converted anyway, so most people can eat them without the mutation).


I offer this theory: it's not the milk that gave an advantage, but the animals and from them, the disease.  Those who could digest milk would have more reason to keep milk-producing animals around.  They would be the ones who are therefore constantly exchanging disease with animals.  Given their proximity, they'd be more likely to be resistant and survive, relative to those who have little contact with animals and therefore are more vulnerable to cross-species diseases.  While those who had direct contact would be more often sick, those who were not in direct contact would suffer more serious consequences, such as mass death.

We saw this demonstrated on a large scale in the Americas, where the Europeans who had frequent contact with animals and their diseases, and who had suffered terribly for it, did survive them, while the Native Americans were devastated by them.  Could this have happened on a small scale earlier in human history, centered around milk-producing animals?

The Master Race

Ever run into a racial supremacist?  They're a surprisingly diverse bunch.  Seems every way we can divide up humanity, someone is convinced that that is the correct way and coincidentally, they're part of the best one.  Weird how often that happens.

To start off, I don't actually think the concept of a superior race is impossible.  If we fully understood genetics, which we don't, it seems possible to determine which racial group or subgroup is the best-suited to the modern human existence and as an added bonus, will do well in the predicted future.  That would be the master race.

There's a problem, well several, but let's start with our ignorance: we are nowhere near the point of actually being able to identify the best genes for humans.  That means that anyone claiming to have identified the master race is just making things up.  You knew that, of course.

Maybe you've tried to point this out.  I don't think there's much use to it.  I'm sure that if I thought I was descended from gods or at least not ascended from monkeys, I'd be pretty eager to keep my own delusional sense of superiority.  So the "you don't know what you're talking about" line of argument isn't going to get anywhere.  People don't like not knowing things, which is why we invented spies and lies, so we could know or at least pretend.

On the opposite spectrum, I bet we'd have a shot at identifying inferior genes.  We've already found many debilitating genetic diseases.  This hints at a process of elimination approach, of identifying the inferior and steadily removing them until all that is left is superior.  Beside that phrasing making that an utterly absurd statement, there is another problem: evolution.

Even if we could, and we can't, identify a superior or inferior race, it would be stupid to act on that information.  Why?  Let's try an analogy.

Imagine that we're designing rocket fuel.  I make a fuel that provides more thrust per unit of mass than yours and the cost difference is negligible compared to the performance gain.  Obviously the rocket surgeons are going to use my fuel for their rockets.  And that's that.  Notice how I don't mention that your rocket fuel and formula will be banned, destroyed, and forgotten.  Why would we destroy knowledge?  At some point, we might be launching from Mars and find that the particular characteristics of the atmosphere there make your fuel the one with the greater thrust and it's cheaper too.  Or maybe the combustion product of your fuel kills Martians and our ambassadors aren't making any progress on preventing war.  Now your inferior fuel is actually the superior one.  Sometimes at least.  It's a good thing we didn't destroy the formula.

But that is exactly what happens when people try to purify the gene pool.  The genes which were useful in certain contexts are gone.  The genes which were harmless mutations are gone.  The genes that are insignificantly different are gone.  But change is not gone.  So when the world changes and humanity is pressured, suddenly it seems pretty stupid to not have those genes around anymore.  It reduces our ability to adapt and survive.

That's the great irony of it all, the pursuit of a master race: it weakens humanity rather than strengthening it.  It is precisely diversity which allows survival because it is through diverse beings that we get diverse responses to the world.

As a concrete example, imagine a world where all African genes are eliminated (let's overlook the human origin in Africa, since we are playing by the absurd assumptions of racists).  And then malaria mutates and finds a new way to spread, without needing mosquitoes, and breaks free of geographic barriers.  The sickle cell mutation isn't of much use when malaria is far away, and sometimes very harmful or difficult to treat, but if malaria were to spread, then suddenly a minor genetic 'disease' is actually a major genetic savior.

No one knows how many other genetic diseases may have been adaptations to past conditions, or may be waiting for a future when they are useful.  Even if we knew exactly what was best for the present, we will never know what is best for the future, so let's not throw away something that may very well be useful.  That's the thing about evolution: it isn't an upward trajectory, or any trajectory at all: it's survival in the situation and survival in the next.

And of course I'm not much a fan of starting multi-generational international wars over delusions of truth.

Theories of Evolution and Gravity

Just to ensure that you understand where my true bias lies: I'm inclined to think that evolution has far far more evidence and usefulness than alternative theories. especially intelligent design which is little more than a devil-citing-scripture way to sneak a twisted form of creationism into public schools.

That said: I'm a bit annoyed by gravity and evolution comparisons, such as when someone defends the theory of evolution by pointing out that gravity is just a theory. I'll try analogy to explain.

The existence of life is to us not floating off into space as evolution is to theories of gravity.
It is a fact that life exists and it is a fact that we do not float off into space. However we don't have much past that. Last I've seen we've still not detected gravitons nor have we managed to fit gravity into the framework of the other three major forces (I admit I'm a bit behind the times on this, so please, correct me if there's something new). In other words, the theory of gravity is entirely different from the fact that we do not float off into space.

That said, we've seen evolution and natural selection in progress, so perhaps the theory of evolution has more evidence than explanations of the phenomenon known as gravity, or as I've named it "not floating off into space".

That said, I cannot promise that I will never again respond with a snarky "so is gravity" when confronted with an "evolution is just a theory" stance.