If humans are a product of evolution...

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If you use the word race scientifically, the way biologists use it, it's not real for humans. The genetic differences simply aren't large enough.
If you insist on using the word race americanly, or in some other way to describe something that isn't actually race in the biological sense, we can bicker over semantics until the moon gets eaten by a wolf or whatever.
race is not about a difference in genes but weather you can breed, scientifically speaking.
So if neanderthals were reproduction compatible, they should be viewed as the same race. That is how we do it with all the other animals.
 
race is not about a difference in genes but weather you can breed, scientifically speaking.
So if neanderthals were reproduction compatible, they should be viewed as the same race. That is how we do it with all the other animals.
Sounds like you're talking about species, not race.

The condition is that they can produce fertile offspring though, not just breed. Donkeys and Horses can breed to produce Mules, but (all male and nearly all female) mules are infertile.
 
Wow was I tired last night. I'm surprised that post came out as readable as it did. I don't think I finished what I called the Outgroup problem. Lets try again.

Another problem - there is always an outgroup. The outgroup to your nuclear family is your cousin, the outgroup to humanity is the chimp, the outgroup within humanity I expect would be pacific islanders or those guys who made it all the way to the tip of South America. So you do tests of genetic similarity and it scales whatever level you examine it at. What criteria do you use to decide where to stop?

Its like human populations have some fractal-like properties. Imagine you've got a Google map of Humanity. Nah, lets go one better. Imagine you've got a google map of Life and that you have zoomed in far enough - You started at multicellular organisms and spun your mouse wheel while you went animals --> vertebrates --> mammals --> primates --> and further. You've reached the point where both chimps have split off from humans and then you tick a box to filter out species that didn't make it to the present day (because our job is hard enough).

Ok, so, we see one group representing all of humanity. Now lets zoom in further and get some more detail. Our magical app performs a statistically significant bunch of mathematical cluster analyses is real time and one group becomes two: Most Africans, and [Other Africans + Everyone Else]. Zoom one more click in and the three groups are Most Africans, [Other Africans + a mess that can euphemistically be called Indo-Europeans], and [East Asians + American Peoples]. If you zoom in to about 6ish/7ish groups then when you will probably see, depending on how the analysis goes this time and the genetic dataset, is Africans, Other Africans, Caucasoids, Southern Asians, East Asians, Americans, Pacific Islanders.

But there is no reason to stop there. Zoom in on any of this groups and it'll start splitting off subgroups. There is always an outgroup and you can keep zooming in until its you and that nasty cousin.

Take home message: We haven't yet agreed on which level of zoom is the "realest", whatever that means. There may not be one. Or it may be discovered that there is one that doctors find useful while anthropologists prefer another. We may not live long enough to find out.


As for the last problem I am Christmassing with my parents and attempting to find Speciation by Coyne and Orr which may or may not be somewhere in their attic. I'm not getting my hopes up.
 
What argument would convince you to not be a racist? Like, whats the foundation on which your racism is built? Is it fear of destruction of European civlilzation or what?

You really are jumping the shark her declaring anyone who dares to disagree with you to be a racist. Even though many of us have gone out of our way to point out this doesn't make any race/group better than any other. It just helps to better understand human origins and how evolutionary processes work.

Thank you for at least admitting you have no arguments and are unable to contribute anything other than mindless name calling.
 
I'm not declaring people who disagree with me to be racists, I'm declaring people who link to racist websites and use their arguments to be racists.

Walks like a duck and all.
 
race is not about a difference in genes but weather you can breed, scientifically speaking.
So if neanderthals were reproduction compatible, they should be viewed as the same race. That is how we do it with all the other animals.

You are confusing different species with sub species. I advise you to look up the definition of the terms you are misusing.
 
I'm not declaring people who disagree with me to be racists, I'm declaring people who link to racist websites and use their arguments to be racists.

Walks like a duck and all.
You think it's reasonable to expect a person to have read every page of every website they link towards?
 
I know the website, it has some good information, and draws conclusions that I can only describe as reaching.

But how exactly does that matter? She did not endorse the side or the author, and instead linked to a very specific resource that compiles information about a very specific topic. That information is either right or wrong, independent from the agenda of the person compiling it. Pointing towards other articles on that site may be useful to show that information provided by the person should be viewed with a very critical eye, it can expose bias, but to call a person a racist because they link to an article that has information relevant to the topic, but also has some arguably racist content on other parts of the site, is just ridiculous.

And of course the reason you're even attacking her to begin with is just to diverge from the topic, because you can't argue against the information she has linked towards.. maybe your time would be better spent doing some research on how to get around your ISP restrictions so you can access the papers. ;)
 
Nah. Theres been no reciprocal effort or even evidence of understanding. As I pointed out earlier the citations are really sloppy and apparently deliberately obfuscated as there isn't even a reference list of full citations so I can seek out the papers using my own resources.

It looks like its designed to waste time rather than invite response.

I feel as inclined to do deep reading and response as I would for Berserker on ancient aliens or Classical Hero on the age of the Earth. That is - not at all due to the other side being non-scientific and steeped in ideology.
 
Ok, so, we see one group representing all of humanity. Now lets zoom in further and get some more detail. Our magical app performs a statistically significant bunch of mathematical cluster analyses is real time and one group becomes two: Most Africans, and [Other Africans + Everyone Else]. Zoom one more click in and the three groups are Most Africans, [Other Africans + a mess that can euphemistically be called Indo-Europeans], and [East Asians + American Peoples].

I know that you used this just to demonstrate your point, but this seems to imply that Most Africans is a group that is somewhat similar to Europeans and Asians. Instead, the first few steps would be [Some Africans], [Other Africans], [Yet Another African Group], [Remaining Africans + Others]. I point this out, because the racists might take your categorization and conclude that it is correct to divide humans into the races Africans, Europeans and Asians, when in fact that is not supported by evidence at all.
 
This thread has been a real eye opener. I never thought of humans as being the only lifeform in the galaxy where biodiversity does not apply. I guess you learn something new everyday as long as you keep an opened mind and ignore the racist research and forum trolls.
 
the racists might take your categorization and conclude that it is correct to divide humans into the races Africans, Europeans and Asians, when in fact that is not supported by evidence at all.

I'm not declaring people who disagree with me to be racists, I'm declaring people who link to racist websites and use their arguments to be racists.

Walks like a duck and all.

Apparently you've become a quotable source ;)
 
Sounds like you're talking about species, not race.

The condition is that they can produce fertile offspring though, not just breed. Donkeys and Horses can breed to produce Mules, but (all male and nearly all female) mules are infertile.
That is what breeding means. Not just having sex.
Well what is the difference between race and species, then?
 
Race is a sociological construct, because societies like to create differences.

Species is a scientific construct, a set of terms we use to allow sorting.

"Species" is not actually an airtight definition, it's a term used for convenience by scientists so that they can communicate faster. By analogy, there's no real all-encompassing definition of 'chair'. But when I ask you to bring a chair from the other room, if you grab the wrong item than the one I intended, it will be chairlike. It won't be a toaster.
 
Race is a sociological construct, because societies like to create differences.

Species is a scientific construct, a set of terms we use to allow sorting.

"Species" is not actually an airtight definition, it's a term used for convenience by scientists so that they can communicate faster. By analogy, there's no real all-encompassing definition of 'chair'. But when I ask you to bring a chair from the other room, if you grab the wrong item than the one I intended, it will be chairlike. It won't be a toaster.

It is kind of like the concept of a measurement in quantum mechanics: It is riddled with problems, has no accepted definition, and is always somewhat arbitrary. Yet, it is still a very useful concept for 99.9% of the cases where everybody will know what you are talking about and thinking too deeply about it would be very unproductive. It is just when you try to narrow down a definition that all these pesky corner cases show their ugly face.
 
if races dont exist what is racism?

edit: maybe I should narrow that down a bit, isn't there a disconnect in accusing others of racism while denying race even exists?
 
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if races dont exist what is racism?

edit: maybe I should narrow that down a bit, isn't there a disconnect in accusing others of racism while denying race even exists?


Racism is pretending that race does exist, that it matters, and that some people are better or worse than others because of their race.
 
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