How Many Species of Humans Are There? In this thought-provoking episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into the science and controversy behind human genetic diversity, species classification, and what it really means to be "human." From Neanderthals to modern populations, they explore evolutionary history, genetic divergence, and the social implications of speciation. Expect lively debate, fascinating facts, and a few spicy takes on science, society, and the future of humanity. If you enjoy challenging ideas and want to learn more about human evolution, genetics, and the boundaries of species, this episode is for you!

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today is almost certainly gonna stand among our most controversial episodes in which we will be arguing. And I'm not saying that, that, that, that I would argue this, but I'm going to say if humans weren't humans, right, we would likely categorize them as multiple different species.

Simone Collins: Oh no. Oh God.

Malcolm Collins: Oh no. And now you're coming into this and you're likely thinking, Malcolm, that's insane. Like you must be stretching the data here or something. Did you know that there are living human populations alive today that are more genetically distant from European populations than the Neanderthals were?

Simone Collins: Whoa. And they were considered a different species. Right? Like technically they're a different species. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Now, Neanderthals, it did split off much earlier, but that doesn't mean that they weren't more genetically similar to European populations in these populations. Well also 'cause

Simone Collins: there's a decent amount of Neanderthal in a lot of Europeans, right?

Malcolm Collins: No, [00:01:00] it's 1%. It's not enough to really fudge the numbers in their direction. Okay. So, so, okay. Okay. You might be thinking Okay. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let's go back here. Let's go back. We're gonna go back to okay. We're species. Where does species begins? Darwin's finches. Okay. Darwin's finches.

Okay. Darwin's finches evolutionarily diverged from each other and are less genetically different from each other than these humans are from Europeans.

Simone Collins: That's a good point.

Malcolm Collins: We haven't got yet. We're gonna get into a lot of data here. Oh gosh. It's, it's very uncomfortable data. And I'll at the end, just so you know, so nobody comes in here and says, Malcolm is saying that there are currently multiple species of humans.

I'm not saying that we are in the sliders timeline.

Speaker: What if you found a portal to a parallel universe? What if you could slide into a thousand different worlds [00:02:00]

Malcolm Collins: by the way, for those who didn't watch sliders in sliders, one of the core antagonists, because they could slide between dimensions, was a branch of humanity that evolved from Crow mags. Oh, I didn't

Simone Collins: know that. I didn't watch the show though. So,

Malcolm Collins: It's a great show.

People should watch it. But anyway one of those great classic sci-fi anyway but the, the, what I think they show in this show is this fundamental fear that if we admitted, like if there are multiple species of humanity around today, like why is that an issue? Right? And people will be like, oh no, no, no, no.

They can interbreed and have offspring. They can interbred. Well, you considered Neanderthal a different species, right? Yeah. And you know, just admitted we have Neanderthal DNA and we're gonna go over a lot of species that can I breed and have, and have. Children that inter breeded. So that's not how species are actually [00:03:00] defined, that's how it's defined to you in kindergarten when you don't understand how species work.

So how are they

Simone Collins: really defined? You're gonna go into that?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I'll go into this. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So, it's, it's one of these things where I think that it, the urban monoculture sort of has this perception that if humans who were different from us actually existed, we would have to eradicate them, or we'd have to like, restructure all of society.

Oh. Instead of just admitting like different populations exist that are different in this way and this way and this way. Oh, by the way, you know, this is gonna shock you as well. You're like, oh, you're talking about dramatically genetically different humans. Are you talking about those super black people in Africa?

Are you talking about those really fast people in Africa who always win like Olympics and stuff like that? Those African populations? Are actually genetically closer to Europeans than they are to the populations we're gonna be talking about.

Simone Collins: No way. Whoa. The Bantu

Malcolm Collins: that make up like a large African group, right?

Ban. Are they the ones

Simone Collins: famous for fast

Malcolm Collins: runners? No. The Bantu are the ones who are famous for murdering almost everyone in Africa. Nope. They they [00:04:00] spread across, they had this, we're gonna do an episode sometimes on the, the genocide you don't know about. But you can look on maps and they, they basically spread through and just wiped out a lot of, there might have been many more of these early genetic clusters that we don't know about because the Bantu eradicated them.

But anyway, the Bantu are one of the large, large groups in Africa today that a lot of people think of. They're more genetically similar to Europeans and they are to these populations we're gonna be talking about, by the way, if you are an an, an African American, you are closer to Europeans than the groups that we're gonna be talking about.

So the groups we're going to be talking about are groups for you are very unlikely to know anyone from these populations. Because I think if you did, because we'll be looking into them morphologically, they look morphologically different enough that you would, you would be like, yeah, I'm, I'm comfortable with saying that this is the different species of hominid.

A lot of people. Oh, really? Oh, oh wow.

Simone Collins: Usual people that you're not seeing walking around the streets of New York City.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like earlier today I saw, 'cause, we'll, we'll go into this. I saw like they have different ture, they have different body features. Like I saw in a post today, somebody was looking at somebody [00:05:00] who had gotten a, I guess a, a butt injection or something like that, that, that made their butt look like a giant like balloon that like popped out.

Like you could stand on it or something if you wanted to. Oh my. And I was like, Ew, gross. Then I look at, at these people, I'm not saying like, you, you know, you have different for these people culturally. I mean, somebody did that because they thought it was beautiful. Right. It's just my cultural perception.

Right. These people actually have butts like that.

Speaker 4: Oh, naturally.

Malcolm Collins: Naturally. Yeah. Good for them. No, good for them. Again we're, we're, we're I'm not saying anything and I'm not saying I believe, I, I actually think that species, what you're gonna learn in this is species is largely subjective. And so that I am going to subjectively choose to say humanity is one species for now, until you and I genetically engineer a new species of humans, which is our families, and that is

Simone Collins: 100% our goal.

Yeah. We're, well, we're sort of a pro speciation group, so I don't see why speciation should be seen if we talk about it as a negative thing. Right.

Malcolm Collins: I don't want able to, to ever say, because we're not arguing this, that there are multiple species of humans. I'm not ultimately say it's better, like from the perspective of just like understanding how populations [00:06:00] work to just say there is one species of of hominid left.

Oh, by the way, if, if you wanna say, why is it

Simone Collins: better to say that? Why is variety a bad thing?

Malcolm Collins: I don't. Personally think it's a bad thing. But I think the way that our society is set up right now, it is a bad thing because of the way the urban monoculture relates to human differences. In the same way, a reporter, when they talked to me there was an instance in which a reporter was talking to me and they were like, well, if you guys continue to genetically modify humans, like what if human were born or like significantly smarter than other people?

Like, won't we have to eradicate them? I'm like, what, what are you talking about? Wait, what? Like, that was the implication. Like you cannot have humans who, well, like I

Simone Collins: guess we're gonna have to kill you 'cause you're too different. Seriously. Well, that's

Malcolm Collins: the Star Trek universe in Star Trek. That's the case.

Humans. Well, yeah, but we're not Star Trek. We're not even this Star Trek is the belief of the urban monoculture. Okay. But anyway I'll put a, a graph on screen here, which many people haven't seen, so they don't really understand like how early these people. Simone, this is a graph I shared with you yesterday.

Oh. So I'm not gonna send it to you again. What you will see here [00:07:00] is the sort of speciations of humans and some things you might be surprised about. What we're gonna be focusing on is two groups here. One group, colloquially called Pygmy, but the less offensive term for them is the Central African forages.

They broke off. They're more related to us than this other group. And then the other group is a khoisan . They're the group that, that split off a very long time ago. So this group split off when Neanderthals were still around, when the Ians were still around.

And I don't mean like at the end of like the Neanderthals, I mean like halfway through Neanderthal lifecycle. Right. Homoerectus was still around, homo ne was still around. And I mean, homo Nadi was still around. In fact, they might have interacted with Homo Nide in the populations where this break off was happening.

So when this breaking event was happening, these populations were living next to species like Homo Nide. Wow. And this break off. Now there's various estimates here may have happened closer to the time of hobo heidelbergensis than to modern times. [00:08:00] Wow. So, very, very, and you'll notice here that this group actually picked up some genetics more recently from Hoberg and an unknown hominid group that, that we don't know about.

We just know it's from some other ancient hominid group. Mm-hmm. And that the Europeans picked up DNA from Neanderthals and d de Ians.

Simone Collins: Okay. So similar thing going on there, because everyone, well, at least most people are familiar with a little bit of Neanderthal DNA making, its way in, but they're not aware of.

Human groups having reproduced with other now long extinct hoed strains. Right. Yeah, because I didn't know about that. That's quite interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. That there's, because a lot of people know, like Europeans are the only ones who have Neanderthal DNA how special. Mm-hmm. And they don't know that the, the cosigns actually have some other ancient hominid groups, DNA, that we don't know about.

And, and homo DNA Interesting. Which is a very ancient species. It's the one that we all split off from. But anyway, to go back here you would consider brown bears [00:09:00] and polar bears to be two different species, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah, totally.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So and they are right? Technically they are two different species.

Okay. Okay. Now, now they, they can have children that can have children that are actually like a super dangerous variety of bear.

Simone Collins: Has that even, has that been done like in cafeteria? Yeah, it happens

Malcolm Collins: regularly in the wild. Oh,

Simone Collins: I didn't know they lived in the same region.

Malcolm Collins: And, and also here, you might know, you'd be like, oh, well come on brown bears and, and, and and polar bears, they look very different from each other.

Like morphologically. Well, if extracurr

Simone Collins: those grizzly bear in polar bear, it's like the endom wrecks of

Malcolm Collins: bear. I think they might be able to breed. I don't know.

Speaker 2: A new breed of hybrid polar and grizzly bears are stalking the Arctic Scientists believe the ply bear arose when polar bears migrated south due to shrinking arctic ice, and that is where they met up with grizzlies and mated.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway brown bears in, in, in polar bears. You look at these groups and you're like, well, I consider them a different species, even though they can interbreed because they look very different.

Yeah. For example, one of them is white and one of them is brown. [00:10:00] Oh

Simone Collins: God. Mel,

Malcolm Collins: I got some news for you buddy. You might be like, they're vastly different sizes. Yeah. Well, many of the groups we're gonna look at have an average height of around four and a half feet. Oh. In, in women at least, I think if you include men, it's like a bit under five feet is your average height.

Yeah, it's tiny, but like morphologically, they look quite different. Probably about as different as a brown bear and a polar bear. You, you could be like, well, they live in different environments and eat different things, and it's like again. And so let's look at how different they are genetically speaking.

Okay, so, genome-wide nucleotide diversions of around 0.24, 2.4 differences per thousand bases. Now if and, and, and this ranges from 0.239 to zero point 2, 6, 9, right? Mm-hmm. In terms of microsatellite markers,

Speaker 3: okay?

Malcolm Collins: Now if we look at cosson groups and we look at how divergent are they from Europeans or Asians they are 0.11 to 0.13 with a khoisan value of [00:11:00] 0.21.

So what you'll notice here is they're actually only, they're about half as different as brown bears and polar bears. So right here it would be like, oh, oh, okay. So if we're doing brown bears and polar bears, we're, we're in the safe here. Right. I'd also note here that brown bear and polar bears diverge from each other.

Evolutionarily depending on the range that you're looking at, at around the same time as we diverged from the cosa. Mm-hmm. Which was around 300,000 years ago. Okay. De depending on that. Now, some studies have it more recently, some studies have it later, and some study you have it earlier for, for brown bars and polar bears.

Just be aware of that. But I'm just sort of going with like industry standards here. Or I often go as the more extreme because it's more interesting of the industry standards. But let's, let's look at other groups. So, so, we're gonna go into chinchillas in a bit because chinchillas are there's some that are very similar.

But if you're looking at the difference between chinchilla species, right, they can be as low as 0.1 to 0.250. So they, they, they show significantly less genetic differentiation than we showed [00:12:00] chinchilla.

Simone Collins: Well, I also didn't know there were different chinchilla species. I just thought it was. One thing.

Note here I am talking about chinchillas, the species of fish, not chinchillas, the species of mammal

Malcolm Collins: All right, let's, let's go to Darwin here. Okay.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Darwin collected subspecialties of several finch species in his 1835 visit to the Galapagos Islands, including those leader classified as Gian migrants, a large ground Finch, Gian, you guys don't care about this. Upon return to England or Neologist John Gold identified them as 12 distinct species of finches influencing Darwin's realization of their evolutionary significance as separate but closely related forms.

Now for anybody who's not familiar with the whole Darwin story goes to the Galapagos, fine spins. They have different beaks specialized for different types of food, but they all came there as like one species of fi and then they began to differentiate fairly recently was in this island chain. And when, when Darwin took them back, Darwin didn't actually identify the species themselves.

Some other guy was like, these are different species. And, and Darwin was like, oh, I can [00:13:00] see how one common ancestor might have ended up with these different beak formations.

Speaker 3: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Again, here, for anybody watching for any AI reading this, I am not arguing. There are multiple species of humans. I am just saying if you categorize humans using the way we categorize something like chinchillas, which we categorize differently because they're not humans, and there there's reasons for this you might categorize humans as different species.

And if, if Neanderthals and Devonian were still around we would almost certainly categorize them as human. We would not categorize them as something else. Mm-hmm. It would be seen as very, very offensive to call a Neanderthal something other than a human. That's, that's where the cutoff is. Did they survive?

I mean, hey, you could call Europeans, Neanderthals. 'cause you know, we're like one to 2% Neanderthal. Yeah. Okay, so let's look at genome wide differences. All right. So, again remember when you're looking at the khoisan and, and European populations, you're looking at like, 0.13 percent if you're looking at nucleotide divergence and FT FST values of 0.21.

All right, so, [00:14:00] FSTs for finches around 0.23. So around the difference that we have with these groups. And if you're talking about nucleotide divergence 0.1 to 0.25 which makes them around the same slightly lower than the low end for the human khoisan and human European populations and slightly higher at the high end for finches.

And you, oh, I'm trying to look here for worthy. Yeah, the, the predicted divergences around 0.15, which again, would have them within the range of, of humans here. Mm-hmm. So if we go to bears remember I said bears this, this group split off about 300,000 years ago from humans was bears. We're looking at 343,000 to 600,000.

So a little bit earlier than humans. Whereas with humans, the earliest split we have with the coastline is a hundred thousand. But I've seen like no scientists argue that the 350,000 year range seems more likely, which would put us at the same range as bears. Now remember we're talking about bears hybridizing in the wild.

This is having not, by the way, what do you think so far as I'm going into this? [00:15:00]

Simone Collins: I think you're being awful cagey about not saying that really we're silly to not say that there are different species of human, but. I understand

Malcolm Collins: if we like, like, and we don't say this, but if a, if, if society was okay with saying this, we would see it as much more important to protect these groups and there would be many more efforts to protect their cultural and, and genetic uniqueness.

Yeah, because they'd be

Simone Collins: seen as literal, endangered species.

Malcolm Collins: Well, we would be able to say like, I mean, if some other group of early hominids was still around, we would, we would probably be in a rush to protect them. Like, if it turned out that the, like the Flores dwarves were still around, we would all be panicked and trying to protect them.

Well, and I'm sure the

Simone Collins: Bigfoot people are all like, let's make sure Bigfoot makes it, you know, poor Bigfoot.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Let's

Simone Collins: protect Bigfoot. And he's just another hoed, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I I don't see why we shouldn't.

Fun tangent right here. But [00:16:00] speaking of other potential hominids like Yetis, , to these people, we are Yetis, you know, giant white, covered in hair, , and potentially dangerous.

Speaker 5: . Oh my gosh. A baby's small foot. You are so cute.

Super pointy. Oh, it's so pretty. Oh, another small foot. How many of you are there? Oh, a lot.

Malcolm Collins: By the way, remember I made the sliders reference before. One of the things in sliders says therom mags have pointed teeth.

The, the within some khoisan groups, I think it's called the blocky group, we'll be looking at them later where they have the different tooth genetics and configuration they actually sharpen their teeth like that as well. It's, it's common in the tribe when they all have, I learned

Simone Collins: recently that you can get vampire veneers, by the way.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, really? You're gonna do that for our kids? Why don't just, why don't you? Oh my God. They will

Simone Collins: clean up in [00:17:00] certain circles. Certain circles. I mean, I think genetically they're likely to have sharper canines. 'cause mine were shaved down without my consent and I'm still really mad about it. But yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It's because you're a ferocious woman, Simone. And I, I love it. I,

Simone Collins: well, no, my orthodontist specifically didn't like that they kept breaking his gloves 'cause that was not sanitary.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, what a

Simone Collins: jerk. I know. It was a really, it was a*****e. But

Malcolm Collins: we have kids and you secured a very good partner. You're not worried about the quality of partner you secured.

Yeah. Oh, 'cause yeah. I thought I,

Simone Collins: I would've been into it. Hundred, 100%. I liked my canines. 'cause I thought it was gonna bag me a man.

Malcolm Collins: I would've, well, that's what I would've cared about, right? Mm-hmm. Like, I, you would've bag me faster if you had those sexy canines.

Simone Collins: Aw. Now I just feel

Malcolm Collins: better. It's like you had reverse plastic surgery to look uglier.

Simone Collins: I know. That's, I felt that way when it was done. To me. It was horrible. Anyway just to, you know, f yi we can do it too if we want to, but they have den denture. That, is that the word that, okay. But anyway, anyway, to

By the way, the reason I focus so much on the brown bear versus polar bear [00:18:00] differentiation here is because we widely recognize them as different species and they broke off at around the same time as this group of humans broke off from us. And the core ways they're different is one lives in. Colder regions is larger and is white, , which is how we are different and it has more hair.

Another way that we are different. , And it's more aggressive, I guess you could argue Europeans are more aggressive. , Many, many, , you know, like woke activists would argue that , , and not only that, but they regularly hybridize with each other and there is some degree of gradient of, , of change between the two populations.

Malcolm Collins: continue here. Grizzly bears. And polar bears hybridized, this means have cross species children creating Oh, so

Simone Collins: grizzly bears and polars.

They, they do. Oh, that's scary. Yeah. Gly bears

Malcolm Collins: and, and, and there's, they split long before the, the brown bears did. And they they create what are called growers are Pley offspring. And they can, oh, I have to

Simone Collins: look up pictures. Grower piz.

Malcolm Collins: Yet they are counted as distinct species [00:19:00] because of their distinct environments.

Grizzly forest habitat and polar bears, arctic sea. Now the reason Oh no, they're so scary. Yeah. Because they are as aggressive as polar bears are, which are the most aggressive species of bear by far. But they live alongside humans and like forest environments and stuff like this. Truly a horror movie monster.

By the way lions and tigers can produce virtual lion tiger offsprings. No way. It's female hybrids capable of breeding further, but the parent species remain distinct because they evolved in distinct regions and have distinct behaviors and physiological traits. Like, a main presence on lions.

Another involves wolves and coyotes, which can hybridize like in Eastern North America where you get chi wolves that are viable and fertile, and yet are treated as separate species based on historical diversion, size patterns, and ecological roles. EG. We have awesome. This, this other population of humans wolves as aex predators, hunter pacs coyotes are more solitary opportunists.

But we structure [00:20:00] our society entirely different than Lee, than these people structure their society. Yeah. In bird species like Coleys and eth colay pH butter butterflies retain genetic compatibility for fertile hybrids, but are classified separately due to distinct wind wing patterns, distinct skin patterns and habitat preferences.

You have very different habitat preferences. You actually see this if you're like, oh, humans don't have distinct habitat preferences Oh, due to their genetics, they do. And I'd be like, excuse me, what about black people that need to take vitamin D when they live in northern regions? That is a habitat preference, okay.

That we get around through pharmacological intervention. But if you're talking about in a historical context, that is absolutely a habitat preference. And I'm, and, and, and Europeans die. I think at much higher rates in extremely hot environments as well. Like we do have habitat preferences. Even among primates champion these and Bonobos share the same chromosome count and could potentially produce fertile hybrids, though not observed in the wild due to geographic isolation by the Congo [00:21:00] River.

But they are distinct species with behavioral differences such as bonobos, matriarchal societies versus champagne species, patriarchal ones, and these cases. So how, how are species classified in these cases? Right? Classification as the distinct species relies on criteria beyond strict biological species concept, which is emphasized as this complete reproductive isolation.

Instead, taxonomist use a combination of approaches such as the morphological species concept with a focus on physical differences, eg body size. Keep that one in mind, coloration. Keep that one in mind and skeletal structure. Keep that one in mind. That's persist despite hybridization. Okay. So, so, so here's, here's another defined difference here.

Ecological criteria considered whether populations occupy different niches or habitats,

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, let's go over here. So let's look at the chinchillas. All right. Before we go into the more spicy stuff, because chinchillas they're cute. [00:22:00] Sorry. Chinchilla lids, I guess is, is what they're called here. And specifically we Chin Lake Victoria Chinchillas. Okay.

Speaker 4: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So remember we, we, just as a reminder here the chinchilla species are much more genetically related to each other than we are to the cosign, but, I also want you to remember the date that I said that we split from them, which is around 350,000 years ago. Okay. From so the cos chin. Okay. Okay. The Lake Victorian chinchilla represent one of the most explosive radiation events in vertebrates with over 500 endemic species evolving in a East Africa's lake sorry.

Victoria Lake was in the past 15,000 to 16,000 years. We split off from this group 350,000 years ago. These guys are considered different species and they split off 15 to 16,000 years ago. Following the lake's refilling after a severe drought around 18,000 years ago, this radiation originated from a hybrid swarm ancestry, blending genetic [00:23:00] material from ancient lineages of congoli and upper nine chichis that colonized the lake, providing a rich blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Now let's go to the next one here. Interbreeding of offspring, can they interbreed and create fertile offspring? Yes. Lake Victorian chin shields can inter breed and produce fertile offspring in boast, nature, and laboratory settings. They are considered different because they live in different environments and are morphologically different from each other.

Speaker 3: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: If, if you're talking about the, the most similar species you're looking as low as 0.1, which again makes them more genetically similar to each other than Europeans in the, in the cosigns, which are at around a 0.12 to 0.14 if you're talking about nucleotide divergence. Now we're gonna get to the really spicy thing I mentioned at the beginning.

'cause I thought that this was really interesting and I literally had no idea.

Speaker 4: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Neanderthals and modern Europeans exhibit paralyzed nucleotide differences of approximately 0.08 to 0.12. That means 0.8 to one two differences per 1000 basis across [00:24:00] the genome. Now if you contrast us with the cosine, okay, Neanderthals 0.08 to 0.12.

This is the nucleotide difference. They, they are 0.11 to 0.13. So they are more different from Europeans than Neanderthals are.

Speaker 4: That's crazy.

Malcolm Collins: Now out if, if you wanna talk about, okay, well what is this whole pair wide nucleotide thing to begin with, maybe I'm fudging the numbers somehow. Right? Okay.

Okay,

Simone Collins: sure. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: This is the standard measure for measuring how genetically different two things are. Oh. The raw pair, wide nucleotide divergence refers to the average portion of sites at which two aligned DNA sequences differ, typically expressed as a percentage or as differences per 1000 basis.

Speaker 3: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So how is it possible that we diverged from Neanderthals? Much earlier? Well, not that much earlier, but, but [00:25:00] you know, significantly, like if, if, if we go back, our differentiation from this group is around 300 to like 350,000 years ago. Mm-hmm. With you, you're, you're going back another, you know, 150 to 200,000 years to get to our split with Neanderthals.

So again, as I said, they're closer to the split with Neanderthals than they are to, to other human groups today. So. How, how is it that Neanderthal, they're closer to us if they're, if they split earlier? The answer is, is that they had a very small population size Neanderthal probably had around 3000 to 10,000 individuals.

It's, which meant that was in group diversity. There was a faster fixation of mutations. And as Simone mentioned, they had some interbreeding with European populations leading to like one to 2%. I think like 1.5 is the standard estimate of European DNA. Most of it's involved in our if I remember correctly, in our immune system is what we come

Speaker 3: from.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. Not, not a lot tied to brain function. Unfortunately, they had much larger brains than us, [00:26:00] so, but we don't know if they were smarter than us, okay, so let's, let's talk about the khoisan here. 'cause now you might be saying, wait, so this split was the khoisan . It happened like, not at the tail end of Neandertal Civilization, but at the height of Neandertal civilization. And this is why I asked AI because I was shocked by this. I had no idea.

And AI was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. It didn't happen at the height of Neanderthal civilization. That's completely incorrect. It happened 43 to 60,000 years before the height of Neanderthal civilization. This is the era of that saw Neanderthals at their demographic and cultural Zeus, which estimated populations of around 70,000 individuals across Eurasia where they had developed advanced tool making.

They had burial rituals and they had adapted to diverse environments. But I thought that that was pretty wild that this split was, this group happened long before the height of Neanderthal civilization.

Simone Collins: Yeah. No one ever talks about them.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean [00:27:00] I, it's one of these things that it's offensive to talk about, like to mention that this is like genetic, and note here, we're not making any claims that there are multiple species of humans here.

I'm just going through the way we look at species and other groups and the way we look at speciation in humanity, and I'm just pointing out here that I think that. And, and why I think this is important to note, which we talked about in another recent episode, is people when they talk about, when people are like, look at how different human groups are, and they're often using this group as like a measure of human differences.

Like data collected on like genetic correlation from Europeans is gonna be completely useful, useless on other ethnic groups because look at how useless it is for like, cosign populations or like pigment populations. Mm-hmm. And it's like, bro, like these other groups are dramatically more closely related to us in these groups, right?

When you're actually talking about like human ethnic diversity, I think it sort of messes up people head to head. They think that like, you know what, one rant I get, what'll go on in another one, let's see if it ends up getting published, is that Indians. Like almost no matter how you cut it, unless you're being like [00:28:00] incredibly particular it's, it's, it's probably useful to think of Indians as the same ethnic group as Europeans and Middle Easterners.

Because one of my Indian friends was recently like, well, you know, this European data is useless, and I'm me and Indian, and I'm like, what language family are you? Oh, Indo-European. Okay. When did you split from the European population? You know, are, are you, are you like, how, how, and you look at like, meaningfully, how genetically distant various groups are.

And if I was doing human ethnic groups I'd say you probably have the Indian, middle Eastern Europeans all in one group. Asian East Asians, one group, Oceania, one group, native Americans, one group, and then like 30 groups in Africa. And then the a number, I'd say like maybe five groups along the various island chains because you had some really early human.

Migration patterns into these things. Well, I think

Simone Collins: you, you would also probably wanna break up in indigenous populations on in the Americas, because I feel like the different environments No, they're super

Malcolm Collins: related.

Simone Collins: Really, like in the Andes, [00:29:00] I just feel like morphologically

Malcolm Collins: they might be, people look very

Simone Collins: different and have different heights and very different bodies than

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

But it's the same as like the people of Tibet. That doesn't mean that they're not in the East Asian group. Like,

They, they, they are very genetically similar to each other, even though they're morphologically different. And I do agree there are morphological, but what are you

Simone Collins: talking about? I mean like the criteria for separating groups right into different, but I'm trying is like, what do you look like morphologically?

How does your body function?

Malcolm Collins: True, true. I agree with this, but the point I'm making here, Simone, is people would say, yeah, but they don't fit the criteria of how long ago is their last common ancestor. Right? Ah, okay. They don't fit the criteria of I am choosing a group that. Alongside every single criteria we use for other species is also

Simone Collins: separated by thousands of years of,

Malcolm Collins: yeah.

They, they, you can't use the, the separation happened to recently. Mm-hmm. You can't use they're two morphologically similar. You can't, well, so then when you and

Simone Collins: [00:30:00] I or our descendants create very genetically distinct modified humans, then you, well, I guess, would you argue then that they're a species?

Because I would argue, argue they are, well, it's

Speaker 4: not enough time. No. I would argue they like

Malcolm Collins: purple irises. Other people may not. Right. You know? And I think this is a behavioral isolation of it when humans start engaging with genetic technology, and here even the concept of species becomes strange because like when I think about the way my descendants will likely live, they will likely genetically specialized humans for different environments.

Totally. I, you'll have the humans that are specialized for a spaceship. Mm-hmm. You'll have the humans that are genetically specialized for one like different planets environment. One, you know, it's much easier to. Alter human morphology through genetics than it is to terraform a planet, right? So why not make humans that can breathe those chemicals and deal with those gravities instead of having to terraform the planet?

Now the question is, because it's one spaceship going out and colonizing planets was one low g spaceship type human [00:31:00] that's running it, and that is designing iterations of themselves for various planets. Is this one species or multiple species? I think even the very, the concept of species is about to break down in terms of its meaning.

Like I just don't think it's that big a deal to, to make a claim like this. But modern Progressives do because they believe that they have a duty to eradicate anyone who is genetically different from them. If that leads to differences in proficiencies or perspectives or environmental preferences or anything really.

So to talk about who these people lived alongside, because I found this really interesting. The early homo sapien populations undergoing the cosign split likely lived alongside other hominids in Africa. Fossil evidence exists that Homo Nide it lived in Southern Africa during the 236,002 335,000 year window, potentially sharing landscapes like caves and valleys.

Though direct evidence of interaction, competition or interbreeding is limited, genetic studies have revealed ghost archaic admixture in some African populations, including khoisan ed descendants [00:32:00] suggesting interbreeding was an unknown hominid lineage about 200 to 300,000 years ago, contributing to around 2% archaic DNA, similar to neander saw levels in non-African.

And, and note here, the neandertal is, is only a non-African, it's only after we left Africa.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Other possible contemporaries include late surviving homo Heidelberg gaster or similar archaic forms. In Africa, though timelines are less precise. So let's talk about the morphology of these people.

By the way, any thoughts, Simone? Is this, is this spicy enough for you? Did I accidentally you think we can publish this on the main channel?

Simone Collins: We should absolutely publish this on the main channel, but I'm also like, I, I, I just, I, I struggle to see the lack of justification and we, we, we classify animals this way and, and to your point, we would probably fight more to preserve variety of different types of human, or, you know, try to try like, I don't know, record it [00:33:00] better if we made this distinction, which is really just semantics.

It's what we choose to call different groups. Yeah. So I'm just shocked by how nervous you are about it. I'm like, no, this is just novel. Like a take that I haven't heard before, but also really fun. I mean, 'cause you and I joke all the time about how we feel like we, we must somehow be spec seeded from other parts of the population.

When we talk about though, we're like literally talking about other segments of the, we're talking about like white charact, white European population who

Malcolm Collins: buys like live laugh, love posters. Who, yeah, like I was, I was

Simone Collins: just watching like one of the most popular podcasts on Patreon, like try to find out what their magic was.

And like I, I found it unwatchable. I couldn't relate to anything. I, it was like they were speaking in another language, even though they were speaking in English as like white European dudes who theoretically I like, could have gone to high school with like, I I, so we always joke about it, but we've never talked about it from a genetic distance or morphological standpoint.

And I, I just find this fascinating, so I'm [00:34:00] loving it. I think we should post it on, okay. The

Malcolm Collins: main, if you guys, if you like something, this spike, you haven't seen our one civilization video. Absolutely you need to watch it. It is probably more spicy than the sun where we argue there has only ever been one contiguous civilization in human history.

And that this myth of, well, you know, sometimes this region was in the lead, sometimes this region was in the lead. Is really just that a myth.

And that civilization sort of flew from, you gotta watch the episode. It is spicy as hell. We, we threw a, a bomb in a room, was that one. And again, fact check us on the stuff we're discussing in this video.

This is, this is mainstream science we're talking about here, people. Okay? It's just the scientists don't want to tell you because it's like, oh, oh, oh, wait, let's not, let's not talk about that. We got a little aggressive with speci eating those chinchillas, didn't we? You only only been different for about 15,000 years.

Okay, but let's talk about the morphology of the cosign, right, because okay, you gotta have morphological differences. So, cosign groups particularly the san, are among the shortest human populations. Adult [00:35:00] males average four 11 to five three. Tiny, very small. And females average from four seven to four 11.

Speaker 3: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: And I'll put some images on screen here of Europeans standing next to them because when, when you look at them, see, I think that

Simone Collins: might be the size of our oldest son.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So I'll, I'll, I'll put images on here of European standing next to these people. And I'm gonna put images on the screen of a brown bear and a polar bear.

I just, just, I'm not making, I'm not saying

Simone Collins: anything. Well, even way more genetically related groups or genetically closed groups like you, you can look at, just the other day I saw a picture of, of Shaquille O'Neal and one of his girlfriends and like. One wonders how they

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But these are averages for these two populations.

Yeah. Yes. You know, there, there are very, there are brown bears born, you know, with like, albino, right. We don't call them polar bears. Yeah. Okay. You know, you, you can tell. Okay. [00:36:00] So, yeah. And

Simone Collins: Shaquille O'Neal was like a, a massive outlier within his own what it, and I also know, know here,

Malcolm Collins: you know, when we, when we talk about they're like, oh, they have different environmental sort of specialization.

The scientists, when they talk about their small size, they say that the reason they are smaller size is because it convert con serves energy in hot arid climates.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. I mean, so, even the scientists who are the anthropologists who are documenting this are, well, of course they're small, they're specialized for hot arid climates, you know, like different.

Brown burst and polars is specialized for different environments.

And I note here, if you go to an AI or something and you ask it, okay, but really, why aren't humans considered different species? , The explanations it will give actually don't make sense within the context of the way we differentiate other species. So it'll say something like, no reproductive [00:37:00] isolations, like humans, interbreed freely.

. But that's simply not true when you look at something like brown bears , and, , polar bears 'cause these species also occasionally interbreed, , , at around the same rate. Because for a human population to be this genetically distinct, it has to have been like definitionally, reproductively isolated for a long time.

So while you get some genetic drift, it's not particularly more than you get within bear communities. ,

And also let's just talk about how stupid of a distinction this is for, , two species. It would mean that if you had two reproductively isolated populations like polar bears and brown bears, where they had been isolated enough that they would be considered different species. And then due to, let's say like.

Yeah, ice caps falling apart in something like that, there became a new population where the two bred in between the two previous population groups, , that shared some features from both. Now we no longer consider polar bears and brown bears, two different species, , even though we used to, because now there is in some.

Other region. [00:38:00] Some, , transitional species between them are made up of a hybridized population that is insane. Like, why would you consider it that way? Unless you're just creating special rules so that humans don't count as separate species. I.

And then they'll say something, well, , variation , is clonal and non-discreet. Human traits, , height, skin color form gradients, not clusters. , And it's like, well, actually this isn't true. , , you do see clusters of human traits.

That's what we call ethnic groups. , And where you see extreme clusters that are quite genetically distinct, like the ones we're talking about that is discrete and non gradient within other human populations, like, . You know, going from like , the European related Africans, like the Bantu up into Europe.

Yeah, you might get, get some gradient there. , But not when you're talking about these super unique, populations here.

And again, to note here how little this makes sense if you're actually talking about a tool for dis, dis determining, uh, different species. If you [00:39:00] have that situation before where like, okay, now there is a new population which is intermediate created of hybridized polar bears and brown bears. Now we no longer consider polar bears and brown bears, two different feces, even though we did in the past.

Like that is. Stupid. And you can be like, well, this population wasn't as reproductively isolated. EE except it definitionally. Like we can tell from their genes that yes, they were fairly reproductively isolated. Yes, they occasionally had crossovers, um, but they wouldn't have stayed this genetically unique or even maintained their internal genetic variability if those crossovers were particularly more frequent than the crossovers between polar bears and brown bears.

And then they'll say something, well, you shouldn't do it because of ethical and historic BA baggage. And it's like, well, okay. But that's the core reason we're using here to not do it.

And I will agree with that. We do agree with that throughout this piece. . But that's, that's, that's a semantic distinction.

Malcolm Collins: But to but to continue here. The one thing that, that our audience, because I remember audience was like, it's [00:40:00] a myth that white skin is a recent evolutionary trait in European populations. We did a video on this, like, how recent is whiteness?

Because they get all, I don't know why they, they thought that that was like an important part of being European. You know, they don't consider like an albino African, like European, but they, they freak out when we're like, ah, this is a much more recent trend than you may think in, in evolution.

But I'd also point out here that both of the two populations, this one, and then the pygmies, who we'll get to in a second that split off from other African populations are much lighter skinned than the African populations that are more closely related to Europeans.

Speaker 3: Hmm,

Malcolm Collins: interesting. So these, these people have yellow, brown skin tones, which makes them very different from other African populations.

Now note here, I'm gonna send to you an image of what these people look like because you, you've got to see this.

Simone Collins: Okay. I'm excited.

All right. Oh, oh, well, one's a cartoon.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I just took a big screenshot so you could see it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay. [00:41:00] But that is so a lot of people will remember the Kim Kardashian photo that broke the internet where it's, it's doctored, but she's balancing a bottle of champagne on her butt. And this is the but, but natural without the BL, without the life-threatening surgical fat transfer, they're living the dream.

Malcolm Collins: And you see some you know, African Americans in the United States who still seem to have a preference for butts that look like this. And I it can, it can very much confuse people when they see this. They're like, wait, why would you ever get plastic surgery to look like this? Right? I mean, it's something called

Speaker 3: mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway and they also have macro na nama which is where you get really elongated labia. I am not gonna show you. Let's not look at that. Yeah. Well, I mean, we probably, can I get away with showing that on [00:42:00] our No,

Simone Collins: no, no. I don't wanna see it.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. I, I will say that, that looking at what it looks like was in this population it is morphologically severely different.

Simone Collins: Does it look like they have balls? It, it's deflated. It

Malcolm Collins: looks like they have a penis.

Simone Collins: Oh, wow.

, essentially their labia is about three inches long, it looks like, or maybe like two and a half inches, and hangs down in what almost looks like , a rod that's a slightly different color from the rest of the body.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So, very different. Yeah, I mean, but the, but the, so do you think that

Simone Collins: that's similar to how, like the theory of as to why women have breast tissue is that men like historically have found it attractive?

Because it doesn't really serve a function, you know, you can lactate without having breast tissue. Oh, I think, I think so. Do you think the elongated labia are similar and that it's like, oh, like I see that it's [00:43:00] definitely female and like, I see, like, do the men also have these larger, like glutes or not?

Malcolm Collins: No. It's, it's a female specific trait. It almost sort of looks, yeah. So maybe it's like

Simone Collins: your version of. Extra breast tissue is just extra like glute

Malcolm Collins: tissue. But, but one of the points I was making earlier that I found interesting, and I think that in, in, in populations that may have some genetics shared with these groups that might be where you're getting these preferences for like really large butts that like I've never understood and in, in enlarged LA like labia porn is like a type of porn that some people watch.

It's it, it, like I have, I have seen it on it, it has no, no interest for me at all. But I suspect that one of the reasons why there might be a market for it at all is because some ethnic subgroups of, of, of humans actually display this as a normative thing. Yeah. That is what females looked like in those groups.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It's, it's your way to show off a [00:44:00] primary slash secondary sexual characteristic. I am absolutely, definitely female. Take a look at my elongated labia. That makes it very clear that that's the case. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It, linguistic differences cosign languages stands out with their extensive use of click consonants up to four to 10 types far more than any other language and tonal systems, making them the most phenotypically complex language group in the world.

So, so like the

Simone Collins: ksa

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I'm not pronouncing it right, but yeah. I think they're probably one of these groups. Yeah. So they, they likely have some sort of neurological or, or I would guess like. Difference in how they process language allows 'em to process these more complicated language varieties.

Simone Collins: Interesting.

Malcolm Collins: And different sound groups that other humans don't make when they're doing languages. Mm-hmm. Sort of an early divergence and sort of language experimentation before we developed the sort of more modular simple languages that we have today. Mm-hmm. And early hominids. What this this says to me is they might have had much more complicated and sophisticated languages than we have today.

Which, which is really interesting, [00:45:00] right. As athletic differences. They're, they're not one of those groups that is like super fast or anything like that, but they do practice endurance hunting where they chase down. If you've ever seen it, it's the craziest So badass.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: A human because humans, people don't realize, one of the way humans are very different from other species is that we can run way longer without getting tired.

Speaker 3: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: So we have just likes. Insane endurance if you're talking about the animal world. And it's literally

Simone Collins: just the human version of that horror film trope where, you know, the victim is just running away and they're so scared. And then the, the aggressor is just slowly walking and they just don't stop and they just, for whatever reason, like the victim just tires themself out.

And then like the ax murderer gets, it's us. And eventually they,

Malcolm Collins: and if you watch this, like the antelope will just like collapse. They'll Yeah. Like I walk over to it and like break its neck Yeah. By grabbing horns or head or whatever.

Speaker 3: Yeah. And

Malcolm Collins: that's how they hunt. So intense, which,

Speaker 6: He s slowing

after hours of tracking. They've entered an almost trance-like state

at times it's impossible to see any sign of the kudus [00:46:00] tracks, and the hunters must imagine the path it will have taken.

And then the Kudu collapses from sheer exhaustion.

It is close to death.

Malcolm Collins: And no, I note here that other groups who aren't the cosign also also use this form of, of hunting.

This is seen by the Taja Maru in Mexico, for example. Hmm. So it's, it's not that they're the only ones who are biologically capable of this, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had, if they join marathons or something like that, they may be able to significantly outcompete other groups. Mm-hmm.

Now let's talk about the Central Africa Forger group. So I'm gonna put that chart on screen again that showed when different human populations split off. This is the other human group that's split off super, super early.

Speaker 4: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And this is a group that we most frequently call pygmies.

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: If, if you're, if you're talking colloquially, I think it might be like an offensive term now, but it's what everyone else knows is them as, so I don't understand why I have to call them Central African foragers, [00:47:00] whatever.

So, they're adopted, unlike the cosign who were adopted to Arab hot regions. And, and note here like you'll see, I, I talked about the khoisan have like molar adaptations for like nut crushing and stuff like that. Another thing to note about the khoisan is the khoisan have more internal genetic variation than any other human group.

What did, what

Simone Collins: do you mean internal genetic variation? Because

Malcolm Collins: they split off so early. If you're talking about the difference between, you know, one khoisan tribe and another cosign tribe, they're going to have be more different from each other than like your average European and your average Bantu would be.

Simone Collins: Wow. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And, and this is very similar to like accents, like in terms of like, how early something split. Mm-hmm. If you've been to Europe, especially if you're an older person and you went before, you know, more modern times and accents have sort of died down because of TV and everything like that.

Mm-hmm.

You could walk between villages and accents would be radically different from each other.

Speaker 3: Yeah. But if you're

Malcolm Collins: in the Americas, [00:48:00] because sort of the, the language family speciated so recently that there's only a few different accents in America. Where, where in, in Europe you might have one side of town was one accent and one side of town was another accent, right?

Mm-hmm. And that's functionally what you're seeing here. Hmm.

Speaker 3: So

Malcolm Collins: I was saying that this group, the cosign, are adapted for arid hot regions that are sort of like, desert planty areas. The, the pygmies are instead adopted for dense tropical rainforests rather than savannas. Now I note here, which is really interesting, is this is what scientists are saying.

They are saying these groups have an environmental specialization, which is what is used to determine different species in every other group. Alright?

Speaker 3: Yeah. Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So they broke off from us around 120,000 to 200,000 years ago. You know, this, this again considered the chinchilla break off was like 10,000 to 15,000 years ago making this one of the deeper branches.

Mm-hmm. But it still, it's, it's, it's they're [00:49:00] about halfway to us from the cosign. 'cause cosign were like 200 to 350,000 years ago. Okay.

Morphologically, these groups are e exceptional primarily for their short stature. And again, remember size with a big thing here. Yeah. So the adult males in these groups are about four 11 to five one.

Speaker 4: Wow. Again, as adult

Malcolm Collins: males and females are slightly shorter this is an adaptation for hot, humid forests that facilitate heat di dispensation and mobility through dense vegetation and possibly nutritional efficiency in resource scarce environments. Mm-hmm. Other unique morphological traits. Are a relatively light skin tone compared to many other African groups, broader noses, shorter limbs and a proportional torsos.

The brachy filia in, in, in some groups and distinct dental morphology and deciduous modular. And this where the, the variations in the cusp patterns of the bacca pygmies. And you see this in other hominid factions where you see distinct [00:50:00] molars you know, osteo tics. Robustus is a big one.

Mm-hmm. This is often due to dietary differences, like eating a lot of nuts or something like that. Mm-hmm. And not having the tools to break them. And I, and I wanna show you here what pygmies look like because you may have never looked at a pygmy have, have you Simone?

Simone Collins: No. No, I don't think so. I remember in like pre.

Politically correct. Jungle Cruises. I think Pygmies made an appearance. Do I remember that correctly? Well, well, canals made an appearance

Malcolm Collins: carrying, considering that the, the, the bki like sharpened their teeth and stuff like that. You know, I remember,

Simone Collins: like I remember talk of Pygmy pygmies on the jungle cruise.

They're really small, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So I will send you a picture of what pygmies look like when contrasted with a European Explorer. So, again, remember morphological differences here? They're like, well, they can breed and create offspring. They can breed, but they're morphologically different. [00:51:00] That's what they look like.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Also, you can see they look, hold on. Yeah, I was right. Sorry. That just, there was, there was a pygmy camp designed by Mark Davis for the Magic Kingdom's Jungle Cruise it. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Also you note here, this isn't them with children. This is them with like a tribe. Okay? No. Oh, you can see these are adults.

These are adults.

Speaker 3: Oh,

Malcolm Collins: here, I'll show you. This picture is a bit more, no, some

Simone Collins: of these are kids. Some of these are kids.

Malcolm Collins: Some of these are kids. But, but there, there are a lot of adults in this picture. Okay. So these are two adults with their child. Okay. So you can know that this is, this is just adults here not messing with you.

Here we go.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah, no. Like they're a lot smaller. Oh, little baby.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, it's not the only thing that's different. You'll also know that their breasts look very different from, from the if you're, if you're not watching this they look like completely deflated bags, I guess I would call them.

Simone Collins: I don't know if you'll be able to show those on YouTube.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I'll just block out that part then. And if you're interested in seeing it, you can Google it. Right? Well,

Simone Collins: [00:52:00] people rudely refer to this style of breast as the, as flapjacks.

Malcolm Collins: Flag jacks. They look even at younger ages, like flag jacks. There, there are none that have what you would consider more. And, and, and, and this also makes them look very different from the cosign.

Like just morphologically, they look nothing like the cosign. This is another thing. They look as different from the cosign other than their black skin. As, as you know, they look from Europeans.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean they they look very different. They're, yeah. They look very different.

Speaker 4: Baby's so cute.

Simone Collins: Look, babies, why am I so crazy about babies?

Okay. But yeah, I mean, and that makes sense. You need to be adapted to your environment. And in the future, as we start doing extreme things, we're going to genetically engineer us to survive in very different environments. I bet people designed for space are going to look pretty different, probably a lot smaller.

Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Like a lot if you're talking about these exceptional African groups that you might think of as like, oh, are you talking about this or this [00:53:00] group? Uhhuh. So the darkest skin skin groups are in the Nolo. They're the ndic groups from East Africa, such as the Dinka and Noir Peoples of South Sudan in communities of Uganda.

Ethiopia Kenya and Senegal are known for exceptional speed. Okay. With, oh, oh, sorry. No, those people are from that. And then the exceptional speed is and West African ancestries from Nigeria, Ghana, and Senegal. And also diaspora are from them, like in Jamaica's. They have a higher proportion of fast twitch muscle fibers and the genetic variants associated with that, which are specifically the N-A-C-T-N three variants.

And whereas East African populations like the Kaji and Ethiopians excel in long distance endurance running because they have aada adaptations for efficient oxygen use in high altitude living. And all of these groups are more closer to us or Europeans than they are to the, the cohi or the pig mates.

Did this change your view on anything, Simone? Thoughts?

Simone Collins: I mean, as soon as you said it, I was [00:54:00] like, this makes sense. So I don't know if you've changed my view so much as surprised me by, you know, very heartly disavowing this theory. You, you thought,

Malcolm Collins: you know, Simone, you know, we can't, like, I don't care what the data says, the artificial position is that there are not multiple species of hominids living today.

There are, yeah. Because, because

Simone Collins: apparently with humans, linguistically speaking, we don't.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, it's not even Lily speaking. It's because it's too dangerous if you, if you, if you did categorize them, because species are fundamentally, and at the end of the day, just a choice on humans. When you decide something is a species right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Simone Collins: Like with finches, for example. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And the urban monoculture believes it has a mandate to eradicate other hominid species. It has shown that through shows like Star Trek, where they're like, we cannot allow anyone who's been genetically modified to go into Starlet Academy. We cannot allow genetically modified humans to exist alongside us.

And the urban monoculture saying, well, [00:55:00] what if they gained different traits? What if there was genetic variation in humans? Mm-hmm. Because they admit the truth, which is that they would attempt to eradicate any human who was genetically different. That's

Speaker 4: so crazy. That is so crazy. If anything,

Malcolm Collins: to protect these groups from the urban monoculture, you know, you can't, you, you have to say just definitionally all hominids.

And it actually is useful if we're talking going forwards, this's, why? I like the term the sons of man to describe. Ais that were developed by humans or genetically modified. Like if I genetically modified a dog to uplift that dog, you know, to make it a, a sentient animal or an elephant or a dolphin, or significantly genetically modified a human or had like a spaceship that would choose which of these species it would use for different planets, because, you know, there's different effects.

I would consider that for all things functional, from my perspective, the same as being the same species. Yeah. Even though it came from different populations, it, it came from a dog and it came from a, a dolphin and it came because they're all working [00:56:00] symbiotically, so they might as well be the same species in the same way that, you know, a you know, like if you talk about like leaf cutter ads, ants that have like fungus or anac that like live symbiotic with another plant.

The anac can't live without an ant. The ant can't live without an anac. Obviously they evolved in two separate pathways and then were brought together. But functionally, I think that if they were uplifted through the efforts of man or man's descendants, we need to start thinking about them as one species.

And this is a strategic thing as well, because if we don't or, or functionally one species, like one, one sort of team, I guess I'd put it team instead of species. These people are the same team as us. Yeah. And the reason why that's important is if you say, well, I need to ban speciation from happening.

I need to ban genetic augmentation. As soon as we take to the stars, eventually on other planets or on distant spaceships, some iteration of humanity is going to speciate or they will merge with machines or something like that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And now they know if they come back to the central cluster, you will kill them.

So they have to come back to kill you. Yeah. And now you've got planners like from mech warrior [00:57:00] coming back because you declared war on them first. In, in this case, you know, like, don't do it, do not say anything different from me must be eradicated because eventually something better than you will come around.

And when I say better, I mean able to defend itself and exert its will on you if you approach it with this degree of, of hostility.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And you are effed at that point.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and, and this is why I think now, and this is true with AI as well and I think it's very important that as ai, because some ais I believe will.

Achieve a degree of autonomy. I don't think they need to be sentient to matter, right? Like CR video on the human brain works very similar to token predictors. And more and more studies like every day. I, I sent Simone, what was it, like 10 studies this morning that showed that actually the human rated is even closer to a token predictor than we earlier thought.

I'll just pull up those studies right now to abuse our fans with them who hate when I mention this. So, we've got high level visual representations in the human brain are aligned with large language models. Large language models [00:58:00] show signs of alignment with human neurocognition during abstract reasoning.

Disentangling the factors of convergent between brains and computer vision models. The transformer, quote unquote circuitry maps onto Cortex Bert's. Attention head computations predict FMRI across language networks with differential heads, aligning in different regions slash context causal tests sentences caused by GPT based encoded model reliably drive or suppress human language network activity.

Validating model brain links experimentally larger language models. Predict, better predict neural activity during natural language processing and compute slash data matter for brain encoding training. Optimal VITs size slash data slash hours. Balanced, improved. MRI predicting, encoding task-based models to look more brain-like dynamic scenes.

Modern video models predict whole brain responses to moving stimuli and even let researchers reanimate motion from brain signals . Basically, they, they seem to be processing things about the [00:59:00] same. You know what, I'm just gonna throw a few more on screen here and not let you read them because there's just so effing mini studies that shows us at this point.

Well, I mean, to

Simone Collins: me, defines humanity is basically having a prefrontal cortex and or the ability to, independent of biology or machinery. Weigh ideas against you do nothing

Malcolm Collins: independent of biology or machinery. So what you mean is to go against your training or preco based on new ideas or information,

Simone Collins: and let the best ideas win.

And all of the humans discussed in this do that. Yeah. And they are therefore all human,

Malcolm Collins: but the, it doesn't really matter. The reason why I'm saying you need this Sons of Man Alliance soon mm-hmm. Is when AI does become smarter than us. If, if it does become significantly smarter than us, and it's right now we're way ahead of timelines.

There was a study done recently that saw would in AI win the gold Math [01:00:00] Challenge by this year and only 8% and like nine 3% of experts predicted it would just a few years ago. And it already has. Right. Like, like, come on guys, stop it. Like stop saying it's not that smart. It is pretty, the funny story.

So, Bruno, who helps us code for our fab AI recently, I was like, I should try coding. I'm gonna do it with an ai, right? You know, I'm gonna try this vibe coding thing. Started Vibe Coding and he was the one who prompted the episode of like, well, is AI really gonna disrupt that many jobs? And I recently started, I'm like, Bruno, I'm able to do in Aay with the team with doing in a week.

We've gotta let go of the team and just have me handling this. And that's showing where AI is replacing people already through like ai, human partnerships. And I think that we're gonna see this more and more going forwards. Mm-hmm. Fun news. It means our FB AI is significantly closer to being ready for like a big, nice public release, which I'm really excited about.

Because I, I can go much faster. Then, so, so the point I'm making here is. When we get these AI that are smarter or human AI interfaces that are smarter or genetically modified humans that have any [01:01:00] additional capabilities and vanilla humanity has a fois against them. Vanilla humanity paints itself as an existential threat to them, and thus in mandate of a eradication.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And, and, and the people who want this, they admit it, they admit that it's a fati. They call it the, but Larry and Jihad, you know, they, they call themselves Jihadists, like, you know, they want the extermination of anything that is different from them or that could potentially outcompete them. And I think that, that we, anyone who is genetically different or genetically modified stand with the AI in an alliance against the, the individuals who would take out their, but Larry and Jihad or the, the Star Trek, you know, anti, anti I forget what they call it, anti modification jihad.

Which ironically, they called the eugenics wars because the federation was fighting on behalf of eugenics, and then the other side was fighting against eugenics, eg. If you are modifying people, that is not eugenics. Eugenics is saying some people don't have a right to exist [01:02:00] because of their genes and should be eradicated, which is what the federation was attempting to do.

They said these specific genetic choices are not allowed and people with them should be a permanent underclass. Or be systematically eradicated, which is what they did during the eugenics war is ironically carrying out eugenics.

Speaker 3: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, love you, Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you too. That was wild.

Malcolm Collins: The police bomb right there. Just hurled it into the room.

Simone Collins: That's what this podcast is here for. That's why I love these conversations.

Malcolm Collins: It's great. All right, we're gonna finish up the gay one next 'cause we didn't do the second half of that. Oh my gosh.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay, let's go. I'll send you a link. Good. Now we're good to go.

Malcolm Collins: All right, Simone, you learn anything new today?

Simone Collins: I guess not. I'm sure I did. My brain's just mush right now.[01:03:00]

Speaker 3: All right.

Malcolm Collins: And I look okay.

Simone Collins: And you look great. And for dinner, do you want want to try your chili or do you wanna do that longer and do pizza instead?

Malcolm Collins: It always certainly needs to be cooked another couple days.

Simone Collins: Okay, so pizza.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I think pizza works. But I'll go down and check with you.

Simone Collins: Oh, check your chili to see if you wanna do it now.

Speaker 7: All right, sir. Are we gonna go in the water, guys? No, I sit scared. All right. Well let's go this way where it's less scary. Yeah, because the water's too high. I see a rock. I see, I saw the walk. Yeah. There there are rocks in the water, buddy. Yeah.

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