Chen019, you are a liar.

[Chen019]

@Kimstu

Standard racial classifications are not the same thing as true genetic populations, even if they sometimes overlap with them to some extent.

This illustrates once again the fundamental problem with using “race” as a biological category. It isn’t that race is never a useful indicator of genetic relationships, but that it’s not a reliable indicator of genetic relationships.

What do you mean by a true genetic population? You could simply say that more closely delineated sub-races or sub groups are a more useful indicator of genetic relationships. You’re still using the basic geographic race concept, just using different terminology. As Coyne notes:

o, for example, one could delimit “Caucasians” as a race, but within that group there are genetically different and morphologically different subgroups, including Finns, southern Europeans, Bedouins, and the like. The number of human races delimited by biologists has ranged from three to over thirty.

For example in McEvoy et al 2010 looking at the 52 populations individually would of course provide greater or finer grained information. Still, you can see the major branches which you might call the commonly known racial groups. I’m saying that is consistent with how the concept is applied in other species - e.g. the Turtle Taxonomy definition refers to the major patterns of variation within the species. You could say that about the broad groups discussed here (which Risch obviously discusses in greater detail in his paper).

The matrix of pairwise interpopulation genetic distances (FST values) was used to construct a neighbor-joining (NJ) phylogenetic tree that summarizes the relationship of the 52 populations to each other (Figure 1A). The tree divides the populations into five broad groups: African, East Asian, West Eurasian (European, Middle Eastern, and Central and South Asian populations), American, and Oceanic. .

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2917718/

[Chen019]

@grude

Chen019 when people say race is meaningless they mean that capricious social groupings have no real validity, take 100 random people snatched from all over the world and have people group them according to race, you know like white and black etc. Now of course these race groups will be meaningless aside from appearance. Well that is what the real world is like, people are classified according to appearance.

So you are right that the social construct of race is real in the sense it effects people everyday, no one is disputing that. You however go one step further and claim that since a college admissions clerk decides Bill and Bob are both dark skinned enough to qualify as African American that this means anything in a scientific sense, and that they are genetically related members of the same race which is nonsense.

No, it isn’t nonsense in terms of how race is defined in biology (see Tang et al below). And yes, it does imply that they are likely to have less genetic distance between them, than between individuals from other races (e.g. european, east asian, pacific islander etc). (see Witherspoon et al 2007 “Genetic Similarities Within and Between Human Populations”. Genetics 176 (1): 358.)

Numerous recent studies using a variety of genetic markers have shown that, for example, individuals sampled worldwide fall into clusters that roughly correspond to continental lines, as well as to the commonly used self-identifying racial groups: Africans, European/West Asians, East Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans (Bowcock et al. 1994; Calafell et al. 1998; Rosenberg et al. 2002).

Subjects identified themselves as belonging to one of four major racial/ethnic groups (white, African American, East Asian, and Hispanic) and were recruited from 15 different geographic locales within the United States and Taiwan. Genetic cluster analysis of the microsatellite markers produced four major clusters, which showed near-perfect correspondence with the four self-reported race/ethnicity categories.

[grude]

@Chen019

No, it isn’t nonsense in terms of how race is defined in biology. And yes, it does imply that they have less genetic distance between them, than between individuals from other races (e.g. european, east asian, pacific islander etc).

But the problem is that they aren’t being grouped via genetic testing, they are being grouped by their looks which are not an accurate indicator of genetic distance.

[Chen019]

@grude

But the problem is that they aren’t being grouped via genetic testing, they are being grouped by their looks which are not an accurate indicator of genetic distance.

I think you are conflating race with skin color alone (Risch discusses this).:

[Two arguments against racial categorization as defined above are firstly that race has no biological basis [1,3], and secondly that there are racial differences but they are merely cosmetic, reflecting superficial characteristics such as skin color and facial features that involve a very small number of genetic loci that were selected historically; these superficial differences do not reflect any additional genetic distinctiveness [2]. A response to the first of these points depends on the definition of ‘biological’. If biological is defined as genetic then, as detailed above, a decade or more of population genetics research has documented genetic, and therefore biological, differentiation among the races. This conclusion was most recently reinforced by the analysis of Wilson et al. [2]. If biological is defined by susceptibility to, and natural history of, a chronic disease, then again numerous studies over past decades have documented biological differences among the races. In this context, it is difficult to imagine that such differences are not meaningful. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of a definition of ‘biological’ that does not lead to racial differentiation, except perhaps one as extreme as speciation.

I’m talking about race (in the biological sense defined by Coyne) which relates to groups with different geographic ancestry and who are physically distinguishable. The fact that they share similar ancestry and hence form clusters on the type of analysis discussed above, is why there is less genetic distance between members of the same racial group than with individuals from other groups.

[grude]

@Chen019

I think you are conflating race with skin color alone (Risch discusses this).:

I’m talking about race (in the biological sense defined by Coyne) which relates to groups with different geographic ancestry and who are physically distinguishable. The fact that they share similar ancestry and hence form clusters on the type of analysis discussed above, is why there is less genetic distance between members of the same racial group than with individuals from other groups.

Not skin color alone but other things as well like hair texture etc, that is how society defines race. People don’t say he was a white male because they have done a genetic analysis and geneological interview of the man.

If you are saying there are “races” that number in the hundreds or thousands, along with complete ancestry information, that is not race in any sense of the word as it has and is used.

[Chen019]

@grude

Not skin color alone but other things as well like hair texture etc, that is how society defines race. People don’t say he was a white male because they have done a genetic analysis and geneological interview of the man.

If you are saying there are “races” that number in the hundreds or thousands, along with complete ancestry information, that is not race in any sense of the word as it has and is used.

Well, the point you’ll see Risch makes in the paper I linked above is that race in the sense you’re using it “e.g.. a white male or european” is one of the major clusters that population geneticists see. That’s what I mean when I say it’s strange for people to refer to race as a social construct as though there is no biological component.

[Gyrate]

@Chen019

Well, the point you’ll see Risch makes in the paper I linked above is that race in the sense you’re using it “e.g.. a white male or european” is one of the major clusters that population geneticists see. That’s what I mean when I say it’s strange for people to refer to race as a social construct as though there is no biological component.

That would be strange, if anyone were doing it.

Genotypes, phenotypes, social groups, geography…watch the lady, folks…

[brazil84]

@Inbred_Mm_domesticus

Variance within a category is just variance. Its an estimate of variability. I will give you the ANOVA version of variance between categories. This is just the variance among groups using their group means as data points. As the group means grow farther apart then the variance increases. Then there is the total variance of all the data which is composed of the between and within group variance. So the more difference there is between groups the greater proportion of the total variance is accounted for by between group differences. A meaningful category will allow me to make predictions about that category that are typically statistically different.

Then for every special characteristic they have we’d find “greater variation between two categories than within a category”.

Can you show me roughly how the calculation would work for some characteristics associated with race and obesity?

And if BMI allows me to sort people into categories that make reliable predictions like these then I am fine with it.

Does the same thing apply to whatever characteristics purported to relate to race?

[brazil84]

@BigT

The assertion is not that people call you racist. You asserted you knew the reason why they were calling you racist, despite the fact that no one has ever actually told you such a reason.

Nonsense, here’s what I said:

Probably that’s also why you are being dismissed as a “racist.”

First of all, my comment referred to assertions that Chen was racist.

Second, and more importantly, I used the word “probably.”

Third, I can make a reasonable estimation of peoples’ reasons based on the context and my general knowledge. It is not necessary for people to specifically admit their motivations to me for me to make a decent guess.

You created a strawman that their position was that you were racist for reason X when they’ve clearly stated it was reason Y.

I have no idea what this means. I was talking about accusations that chen was racist. I speculated about the motives for the accusation. I did not misrepresent anyone’s position.

Like I said, you conveniently overlook when you personally break your own rules.

Nonsense, you are just misinterpreting my posts and rules, either intentionally because you are jerk or unintentionally because you are self-deceived.

Yet you somehow still don’t have me on ignore.

I usually don’t disengage from people unless they insist on breaking the rules after I press them. However, let me ask you this:

Above, when you misrepresented my position, did you do so intentionally so that you would be breaking my rules?

magellan has repeatedly used ad hominem attacks and strawmen. But, since he’s on your side, you don’t have him on ignore.

I’m not interested in policing (ETA: this isn’t quite the right word) the entire message board. I disengage from people who strawman me. Or weasel when engaging with me. Of course people who do things things are usually not on my side.

Heck, I believe you’ve said before that you only hold to your rules against people who argue against you personally, making it inherent.

Sure of course. So what?

You are one of the most dangerous types of arguers on the planet: the one who puts up all the dressings of being logical and rational, but, if you actually look a little deeper, is just more skilled at hiding your biases.

Lol, it looks to me like you are the one who is biased. Based on the way you misrepresented my position above.

Also, look carefully at what you did: You said, in essence, that it was dishonest for me to speculate about peoples’ motives, that I can know peoples’ motives only if they admit to them. And yet in the very same post you seem to feel you are confident that I myself have unreasonable motives. You did not even qualify your attack with the word “probably.”

Why would you have a double-standard like this if you are not biased?

[mister_nyx]

@brazil84

Nonsense, here’s what I said:

Lol, yes, let’s all make a special resolution to take extra seriously the guy who has a particular rule that he will not respond to you if you prove him wrong.

Wait: shit, that was insensitive of me. You also have a special rule that you will not respond to anyone who proves you wrong, too. I’m sorry for not respecting your ancestral inability to respond to scientific questions. I feel bad.

[DMC]

Chen019 is a racist.

If he proved tomorrow (fat fucking chance) that blacks were in every way inferior to whites, he’d still be a racist. If someone was able to provide him with indisputable proof that every last human on the planet has the exact same genetic characteristics, he’d still be a racist. It doesn’t matter what the evidence says in any way, he’s not going to stop being a racist.

I get that it’s sometimes good to not let racists have a soapbox without rebuttal, but at some point it’s simplly a waste of energy. If I wanted to argue with racists, I’d hang out at strmfrnt.

In summary, Chen019 is a racist.

[digs]

@DMC

…If I wanted to argue with racists, I’d hang out at…

Heck, just hang out with my mom. Half of her friends were members of the John Birch Society, I kid you not. And I’ve heard all their arguments.

So I’m used to the smokescreens that racists throw up to convince themselves they’re “just being honest, unlike all those ‘sensitive’ ‘PC’ types”.

[Chen019]

@ DMC

Well, me and Professor Robert A. Weinberg. You might find his Biology 7.012 lecture here at MIT of interest.

btw. I would prefer not to engage in debate with evangelical Christian creationists such as yourself.

[GIGObuster]

Grasping at straws, besides not being flattering to Nazis, eugenicists and racists, Weinberg is not sure that looking for intelligence genes would be ok, once gain it is in the medical field that this means something now, what it is clear that that even he is telling us that:

“You don’t need to know about SNPs to begin to understand the potentially devastating impacts that the **misuse **of genetics can have on our society.”

So, once again, not a problem for specific uses in medicine, and he is clearly not supportive of efforts to use any future discoveries to be used by future “race realists” on society at large. (After all the huffing and puffing from race realists here, Weinberg reports that there is only speculation and we may not find specific genes for intelligence, it is a flight of fancy right now).

Others report how much support people like Rushton get among scientists:
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/12/the_argument_that_different_ra.php

The argument usually starts out noting that there are dozens of papers that document group differences in IQ. I’ll point out right now that most of those papers are published in journals with editorial boards staffed in part or in total with well known racist scientists such as J. Philippe Rushton. That fact is not too important to what I have to say here, but since the usual argument about race and IQ starts out with “Hey, look at all these papers in these great journals” it is worth noting.

…

The smoke and mirror part of this is equating heritability with inheritance. We speak the language we speak because it is the language of the culture we grow up in, not because of a gene for speaking French vs. a gene for speaking Sumerian.

This makes sense because we know how a person acquires language, so no one even tries to measure heritability of which language someone speaks. (Same with heritability of geographic location. It would be an absurd measure.) But people make the assumption that intelligence is inherited. Why do they make that assumption? Because lots of people for a long time wanted to, and in some cases, needed to believe this so, and thus it has become part of our culture. It is part of our uncriticized received knowledge, along with other racialized ideas and various sexist ideas, and so on. But recent research (meaning over the last 30 years) has shown us that other than in the case if inherited neuro-developmental diseases, it is impossible to imagine how intelligence can be inherited in such a way as to explain the variability we see in the most inter-group differences. That there is some genetic component is not impossible, but it is very hard to maintain the idea that it is genetic and ethnic, or genetic and racial, or genetic and explanatory of more than a few IQ points in most people. There are no genes, there are no developmental mechanisms, that have been identified. So, to many the issue of inheritance (not heritability, but inheritance via genes) of intelligence is not really an issue.

However, there are many who still need to hang on to this belief. Why they need to hang on is itself an interesting question. I can’t say for a given individual but I’ve been engaged in this conversation for 30 years and in my experience it is very often because of a desire to support a racialized model of human behavior.

The evidence for the usual IQ/Group/Race/Ethnicity/Genetic model we see (and we are seeing it again now in the present discussion) is always given first as group differences. When the language and geography analogs are brought up, we always see the twin studies brought in. But twins are raised together in the same environment. So they have the same language, the same cultural customs, the same geography etc. That they have the same IQ is not surprising.

There is an interesting set of interactions between familial effects and environmental effects with any of these twin studies results, but it has to be understood that heritability is not inheritance. If you have a genetic mechanism that is real (not inferred or made up) that integrates with a developmental process that can manifest a phenotype based on a genotype (that is real, not made up or inferred) then you can translate heritability to genetic inheritance. We seem to see this in a number of psychological conditions/diseases, for instance, and obviously we see it for a lot of physical traits. If on the other and you have familial effects that would cause offspring to resemble their parents without genes then cultural/social/familial context is more likely to be the explanation.

[TriPolar]

@Chen019

@ DMC

Well, me and Professor Robert A. Weinberg. You might find his Biology 7.012 lecture here at MIT of interest.

btw. I would prefer not to engage in debate with evangelical Christian creationists such as yourself.

So there’s another idiot like you who throws out the word ‘race’ without defining it. Come back when you have complete, consistent definition of what a ‘race’ is.

[Chen019]

@TriPolar

So there’s another idiot like you who throws out the word ‘race’ without defining it. Come back when you have complete, consistent definition of what a ‘race’ is.

Read the thread before making an ass of yourself.

[Chen019]

@GIGObuster

After all the huffing and puffing from race realists here, Weinberg reports that there is only speculation and we may not find specific genes for intelligence, it is a flight of fancy right now)

Until a few years ago you could make a similar claim for genes relating to height, another quantitative heritable trait. As Greg Cochran notes in the comments, phenotypes aren’t exactly a secret.

What may be more interesting is what is found in relation to other traits, as Jonathan Haidt alludes to here.

In any case, a person such as yourself, who obviously believes there is a conspiracy to keep some groups down, should be interested in this.

[GIGObuster]

@Chen019

Until a few years ago you could make a similar claim for genes relating to height, another quantitative heritable trait. As Greg Cochran notes in the comments, phenotypes aren’t exactly a secret.

What may be more interesting is what is found in relation to other traits, as Jonathan Haidt alludes to here.

In any case, a person such as yourself, who obviously believes there is a conspiracy to keep some groups down, should be interested in this.

“Might” or “could” is still no evidence. Grasping at straws again.

BTW the writer there also is not being flattering to the ones proposing to use any evidence to push reprehensible agendas in the future.

[TriPolar]

@Chen019

Read the thread before making an ass of yourself.

In this thread you continue to use the same circular logic and intellectual dishonesty that you are being pitted for, and have used in other threads. Name the races or shut up.

[Chen019]

@GIGObuster

“Might” or “could” is still no evidence. Grasping at straws again.

Not really. Intelligence is partially heritable. Differences between individuals are partly due to genes. If you aggregate individuals into groups you’ll note that there are significant differences. That has always been the case. Even if you control for parental income and education there are significant group disparities.

You presumably think that research will show there is no different in the frequency of geneslinked to these abilities across groups. I think that’s rather optimistic.