Is this the best definition of race ever?

[GoodGame]

The reason to keep it on the Census is that it still affects public attitudes. It still affects people's life prospects. It still affects public policy. People, public and private, still act on race. And so the government needs a snapshot of what is out there.

That's what I meant. It's still a cultural phenomen.

 

[vornan19]

No, I did not, and since you seem to keen to dismiss that there are any differences between races, I think you must think some racial differences make some races inferior, otherwise what would the big deal be?

There are very real and indisputable differences between races. I was referring to how sweeping generalisations are used, both historically and currently, to justify all manner of ills - from the (relatively benign) segregationist policies of South African apartheid, to lynchings by the KKK.

Are there definitive lines between white and brown, or brown and black? Obviously there are ends of the spectrum but at what point can someone be said to be no longer white?

 

[Hygro]

You have forgotten the fact of geography, which I think isn't exactly a minor one.

And if you are willing to put IQ and conscientiousness, not to mention the various sporting abilities, and the propensities to many fatal diseases, in the category of 'cosmetic' differences, I'm in complete agreement.

Oh did I? Or perhaps geography leads to cometic differences.

Also, you'd have to be a total and utter crackpot to not know that IQ and "conscientiousness" (lmao if I ever heard of a subjective term) are largely cultural factors. IIRC a 100 IQ today is the equivalent of 115-120 IQ of someone from 1900. People aren't getting genetically smarter... We know that the stereotype threat is a hugely significant factor in the world and that when you control for it, or preempt it, IQ scores from underperforming groups end of bridging much of the gap. You justification for IQ differences based on race is laughable.

Sporting differences and differences in disease potential are in fact largely cosmetic. Controlled for wealth, social interaction, and other cultural factors, everyone lives about 90 years and is just as capable of success as anyone else.

 

[aneeshm]

Oh did I? Or perhaps geography leads to cometic differences.

I see. Can you explain why those differences have to be cosmetic? I see no reason to presume so. ('It would be so awful if they weren't' isn't really a good enough reason, I'm afraid.)

Also, you'd have to be a total and utter crackpot to not know that IQ and "conscientiousness" (lmao if I ever heard of a subjective term) are largely cultural factors. IIRC a 100 IQ today is the equivalent of 115-120 IQ of someone from 1900. People aren't getting genetically smarter... We know that the stereotype threat is a hugely significant factor in the world and that when you control for it, or preempt it, IQ scores from underperforming groups end of bridging much of the gap. You justification for IQ differences based on race is laughable.

Sporting differences and differences in disease potential are in fact largely cosmetic. Controlled for wealth, social interaction, and other cultural factors, everyone lives about 90 years and is just as capable of success as anyone else.

In a world where you can make up your own facts, anything is possible. The above post inhabits such a world.

First of all, the winning of hearts cannot be done by calling a man a 'total and utter crackpot', nor the winning of minds by displays of colossal ignorance.

In addition to the summary I linked to in the beginning (if it doesn't satisfy you), there is in addition the Wikipedia article on IQ (and its heritability of around 0.85, as concluded from a meta-analysis) and the 'big five personality traits', one of which is conscientiousness (heritability 0.49). (I expect that as the definition of conscientiousness gets clearer, and testing for it becomes more reliable, its heritability will be seen to increase.) Unless there is any solid data to back the 'culture' hypothesis, it would be wise to drop that ritual incantation; its efficacy has been exploded by the data.

The Flynn effect, interesting enough, cuts both ways. Yes, people's scores on IQ tests are rising. No, it doesn't negate the racial differences that existed in the scores to begin with; a rising tide lifts all boats. The mechanism is not yet fully known. And it appears that the effect is plateauing. Further, given the heritability data above, your statement that 'we are not getting genetically smarter' has nothing whatsoever to support it. (Nor does it have anything to oppose it, mind you; it's a naked assertion.)

Even when you control for everything that you have said, the racial gap in IQ remains. Stereotype threat fails completely at explaining this observed difference. Feel free to laugh at over seventy years of meticulously collected data is that is what you find laughable. The SSSM has no legs left to stand on scientifically; it is only the other implications of its abandonment, and the desperation of those that have been its supporters for so long, that keeps it going.

Regarding differences in sporting ability or disease propensity being 'cosmetic', I would disagree. Sickle-cell anaemia is no small matter. Nor are treatments which work well for one race but not that well for others (yes, they exist).

Finally, as for the 'controlled for everything, everyone is equal' assertion, it is very naked and actually laughable. The studies that have actually controlled for the factors you mentioned have come to the conclusions that a) there are significant and persistent (statistical) racial gaps in intelligence, conscientiousness, criminality, and a host of other traits, and that b) the heritability of these traits is high, and c) on many of these traits, culture makes next to no difference. The poster-child for this is IQ (more specifically, g), because it is the most heavily studied.

 

[Hygro]

Since I spend my time studying more real things I am at a disadvantage debating on your terms. I however suspect that your assertions are full of malarkey and the studies to back them up are as well--but more likely are being misinterpreted in their findings.

 

[Skwink]

We are all the Human Race. Then we go into breeds, like cats. There's a White breed, a Black Breed, an Asian breed, and many others.

 

[Cheetah]

Cheetah, most of the differences between the different peoples of the world are basically just superficial. They are very minor and really do not need us to make a distinction between two different groups. We are part of the same family the humane race and that is all that should matter. Skin colour is just a matter of pigmentation and other features are just external differences and yet what makes a human human, is what is on the inside of us.

Basically superficial? The opinions are diverse on that question, but the individual differences are so great anyhow that I'll concede for now that we are only talking about external attributes.

Still, what makes a human human is our DNA: It is similar enough that we can mate and interact in all the ways humans can interact, yet diverse enough that we can also be individuals. Both internal and external attributes are part of what makes us a member of the human specie.

That does not preclude there being different races within the human specie! Even if we are only talking external attributes, there are more than enough statistical differences between people to allow for categorisation of people into different races.

Anybody who needs further instruction in why this hard cap on race is stupid is hereby referred to the Egyptian genetics threads in OT and WH.

I actually got through that mammoth of a thread once...

And it is very true that trying to decide on specific races in areas where there has been large-scale migration for millennia - if not tens of millennia - is an extremely difficult task at best. But again, that does not mean that there aren't such a thing as human races.

Also, is it just me, or is Al arguing that the higher rate of Neanderthal genes is what makes whites superior?

Then you need to brush up on your white nationalism.

He had never insinuated in this thread that he considered any set of humans superior to any other. Admittedly, he's pushing it a lot with the spaceships-tax forms-dancing proficiencies, and I'm foggy on what exactly he's been posting in other threads, but you're not playing nice here...

Maybe because our vastly longer generations combined with non-selective breeding combined with a fairly uniform division of labor due to human nature/necessity across cultures prevented significant non-cosmetic differences.

Geographically separated population groups with different sets of environmental factors is more than enough to get some differences. Selective breeding is not necessary to create new races - or species.

After all, I've heard it only takes about 20 generations (and the correct environment) to do something as simple as going from very white skin colour to very dark, and vice versa. Human population groups have been separated for much longer than that at times.

Are there definitive lines between white and brown, or brown and black? Obviously there are ends of the spectrum but at what point can someone be said to be no longer white?

This is of course that crux of the issue. Everybody can tell two very different races apart, but how one goes about deciding where the borderline subjects fall is currently near impossible.

As I said before, hopefully better dna sequencing will allow us to give more definitive answers to these questions.

 

[Cheetah]

We are all the Human Race. Then we go into breeds, like cats. There's a White breed, a Black Breed, an Asian breed, and many others.

Seems I use the term 'specie' in the same way you use 'race', and 'race' in the same way you use 'breed'.

Oh, well. I'll look up in a dictionary later I guess...

 

[Terxpahseyton]

And here we come to the crux of it, because when it comes to humans, we are as much a product of self-selection (our own 'incredibly artificial circumstance, with an intelligent force - us - directing the breeding process and selecting for desired traits aimed at the specific goal of mating with a certain kind of human') as we are of 'natural selection'. The Ashkenazim are a case in point. For an overview of this, I suggest you look at the book The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilisation Accelerated Human Evolution.

I took a look at the book and I think this comment should accompany your recommendation:

This book was fun to read just because much of the speculation in it is so ridiculous. And it is rife with speculation. Bushmen have a hard time adapting to life as shepherds - it must be genetic. Odd, I have the same problem learning Mandarin: Is that genetic too? Tay-Sachs and Gaucher's exist at such high frequencies amongst Jews and everyone knows Jews are smart; heterozygous Jews must be smarter than the rest of us. Oddly, Tay-Sachs heterozygosity hasn't had the same impact on French-Canadians and Cajun populations, which also have high frequencies of the disease alleles, or among the Irish who have very high levels of phenotypic heterzygousity (half the normal enzymatic activity as typical homozygotes). Gaucher's heterozygousity is likely to be advantageous in environments that have frequent outbreaks of influenza and TB (if you're familiar with Pubmed, do some searches to find out how Gaucher's affects the immune system). Just a few years ago the author's of the book were hailing the discovery of a new allele for the microcephalin gene that emerged around 40,000 yrs ago. Since microcephalin is known to have an impact on brain size the emergence of this allele must be one of the reasons Europeans are so smart. Unfortunately, it's now been clearly demonstrated that the allele has no impact on IQ. It's also strange that the authors never mention the Flynn effect (raw IQ scores among populations tend to increase with each passing generation; the Flynn effect has been correlated with urbanization and family literacy). The book is worth reading if you're reasonably well-informed and don't just accept the authors' take on something when they express an opinion. Finally, I've been a biologist for 20 years (with a reasonably extensive background in microbiology, developmental biology and evolutionary biology) and I can't recall a single colleague every suggesting that human evolution came to a grinding halt thousands of years ago. Suggesting such a thing would be silly.

 

[aneeshm]

I took a look at the book and I think this comment should accompany your recommendation:

Oh me! What shall I ever do! A reviewer on Amazon disagrees with a book! It has been discredited forever!

More seriously, the book provides a framework for understanding one aspect of human history - specifically, the role of genetics - as it relates to the civilisation explosion, much like the Selfish Gene and the Extended Phenotype did for the gene-level view of selection.

A large number of the details are probably wrong, and speculative. This is freely admitted by the authors, so there is no deception involved. Therefore, picking one or two targets in the book and then attacking them with extreme vigour is nothing more than a waste of time, energy, and effort. The central thesis, however, remains strong.

Lastly, if you're looking for a reason not to read the book, you need not take the support of a plausible-sounding authority in the form of an Amazon reviewer. All men have a fundamental right to remain ignorant, and nobody can ever take this most precious right away from them. It requires no rationalisation.

 

[aneeshm]

Since I spend my time studying more real things I am at a disadvantage debating on your terms. I however suspect that your assertions are full of malarkey and the studies to back them up are as well--but more likely are being misinterpreted in their findings.

This is the first specimen I have seen (in the wild) of that most curious species of argument, the argument from inverted authority. In abstraction from all details, it goes something like this:

1) You clearly know what you're talking about.
2) I (equally clearly) don't.
3) (1) can only be true if you're studied it for some time.
4) The only reason you could have for studying it is to substantiate a position - a preconception, it is implicitly assumed - that you care for.
5) Therefore, I can safely ignore everything you say, safe in the satisfaction that you're wrong because you know what you're talking about.

The beauty of this little gem of emotional reasoning is that it applies to everything. You're a physicist? Then you must be wrong on physics. A mathematician? You're prejudiced by everything you've learnt. And so on...

(And by the way, I 'study' computer science. I presume your studies are in something much more 'real'. This is merely a side interest, engendered by an excursion into evolutionary theory I made when the 'God Delusion' controversies were raging, and later refined in a seminar course where I chose genetic algorithms as my topic.)

If it's any consolation, racial differences do not and cannot say anything about a particular individual of a given race. They can assign probabilities, and they can predict group outcomes, but dealing with an unknown individual is always and everywhere a gamble.

 

[Hygro]

All men have a fundamental right to remain ignorant, and nobody can ever take this most precious right away from them. It requires no rationalisation.

Hence why I wasn't worried about calling those ideas crack-pot at the risk of ruining one's chance of finding truth due to willful ignorance by believing this rabbit-hole of a red herring

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Oh me! What shall I ever do! A reviewer on Amazon disagrees with a book! It has been discredited forever!

More seriously, the book provides a framework for understanding one aspect of human history - specifically, the role of genetics - as it relates to the civilisation explosion, much like the Selfish Gene and the Extended Phenotype did for the gene-level view of selection.

A large number of the details are probably wrong, and speculative. This is freely admitted by the authors, so there is no deception involved. Therefore, picking one or two targets in the book and then attacking them with extreme vigour is nothing more than a waste of time, energy, and effort. The central thesis, however, remains strong.

Lastly, if you're looking for a reason not to read the book, you need not take the support of a plausible-sounding authority in the form of an Amazon reviewer. All men have a fundamental right to remain ignorant, and nobody can ever take this most precious right away from them. It requires no rationalisation.

Your reply is hilariously loaded

 

[aneeshm]

Your reply is hilariously loaded

Truly, you have me at a grave disadvantage. By not saying anything, you have most cunningly left me nothing at all to reply to, much less attempt to refute!

(If I promise to declare you the 'winner' of this discussion, will you in return promise to learn what it was all about?)

 

[Arakhor]

I tend to agree with Sill. If you will make comments about people having the right to remain ignorant and then make airy comments defending the idea that blacks are genetically more stupid than whites (for example!), then you may well be attempting to remove the splinter from your friend's eye, as Jesus said.

 

[JollyRoger]

Cheetah, most of the differences between the different peoples of the world are basically just superficial. They are very minor and really do not need us to make a distinction between two different groups. We are part of the same family the humane race and that is all that should matter. Skin colour is just a matter of pigmentation and other features are just external differences and yet what makes a human human, is what is on the inside of us.

So is gender more of a a pigtail of our imagination or a figleaf of our imagination?

 

[Hygro]

Knowing JR there is a 25% chance that "geneder" is part of the pun and not a typo.

 

[aneeshm]

I tend to agree with Sill. If you will make comments about people having the right to remain ignorant and then make airy comments defending the idea that blacks are genetically more stupid than whites (for example!),

Scrolling up, you shall find, if you search diligently, my first foray into this thread. It contains a link to a summary of the current findings on this topic. Unless you already know what it contains, it is an essential pre-requisite to meaningful participation in this discussion. (Meaningless but passionate participation, however, is free to all.)

then you may well be attempting to remove the splinter from your friend's eye, as Jesus said.

Well, given that I'm the only one actually furnishing hard data, as opposed to peddling artfully nude assertions...

 

[JollyRoger]

Of course certain races have to perform well on standardized mental challenges. It's the only way they can make life choices that will allow them to overcome their physical disadvantages when it comes to wooing a mate.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Truly, you have me at a grave disadvantage. By not saying anything, you have most cunningly left me nothing at all to reply to, much less attempt to refute!

(If I promise to declare you the 'winner' of this discussion, will you in return promise to learn what it was all about?)

Well you supported the main discussion point with said book, and the comment does an acceptable job in making one aware how easy it is to draw the wrong conclusion concerning genetics.

The book is worth reading if you're reasonably well-informed

is the core of the comment and I think this is a very important statement with regards to the topic of this thread. Because my impression is that many people (which does not necessarily mean you) don't sufficiently appreciate the complexity of it and how difficult it is to prove causation rather then correlation.

But as a side-note: I am also fairly annoyed by the crowed feeling the urge to relate everything to racism. It seems unproductive.