Chen019, you are a liar.

The BBQ Pit
381

It is biologically meaningless because you can’t tell us told us what race is in any biologically meaningful way. Your example tells us that someone is Black because another person in the US in 2012 calls them Black. That is the epitome of a subjective, and hence biologically meaningless, evaluation.

Your entire example, BTW, is a classic fallacy of composition.

All bricks are red and weigh 1.5 kg. That house is made of bricks. Therefore that house is red and weighs 1.5 kg. Ahhh, no, it doesn’t. That house is bright blue and weighs 300 tonnes.

All the best sprinters fall into the category of “Black”. Sprinting performance has a biological basis. Therefore the category of “Black” has a biological basis. Ahh, no, it doesn’t.

If you want to actually discuss this then join the GD thread. I don’t swim in the toilet and I don’t shit in the swimming pool.

382

I would watch the fuck out of this reality show.

383

Go here: ANOVA. Type in two for samples and click independent. Plug in your numbers below that. Your ANOVA will be significant. Look in the ANOVA table at the row that says Treatment - between groups. You’ll see a column for “MS”. This stands for mean squares which is just another way of saying variance. That value is 10. The variance due to error is the within group variance. It’ll be 0.63. You’ll notice that it matches the variance calculated for each sample separately. So there you have it, the statement continues to be true.

Yes, they would be able to say there is a difference.

384

That may be so . . . quite possibly the traditional racial groupings are a lot more natural and reasonable than people give them credit for.

My point is that even if one assumes for the sake of argument that racial groups are completely artificial, gerrymander categories, it’s still not unreasonable to observe differences in these groups and hypothesize that there are genetic causes for these differences.

385

That is some impressive obfuscation there - vague terms that could mean anything so as to avoid accountability for any potential conclusions, plus an implication of irrational hysteria in one’s opponents. You are a master. Let’s unpick that.

Note the ease with which you blend genotypical and phenotypical traits, and possibly social and geographical groupings too depending on how you mean “common heritage”. It makes a huge difference depending on what you are talking about.

Here are things that no one is arguing:

  • There exist distinct and classifiable genotypical groupings, which may contain statistically significant differences in various ways.
  • People with the same genotype will likely share common phenotypical traits.
  • People descended from a group inhabiting a small geographical area for long periods are more likely to share some genetic heritage.

Please stop pretending that these are being debated. On the other hand, these things ARE being argued:

  • People with common phenotypes must share some genetic heritage
  • You can therefore treat genotypes and phenotypes as essentially the same thing.

Since it has been mentioned over and over that you can pick any physical traits you like and demonstrate a lack of common genotype, it is a perfectly valid approach to not only continue to refute these but to question why some people continue to put them forward as valid with “so much passion”.

I’m sure it’s comforting to dismiss cries of racism as political correctness but nonetheless this is what we’re attempting to debunk:

  1. There exist distinct and classifiable genotypical groupings, which may contain statistically significant differences in various ways.
  2. People with the same genotype will likely share common phenotypical traits.
  3. People with common phenotypes therefore must share some genetic heritage.
  4. You can therefore treat genotypes and phenotypes as essentially the same thing.

Note from what I wrote above that the argument falls apart not at steps 1 or 2 but at steps 3 and 4. And the racism becomes apparent when you hit step 5 and 6:

  1. You can therefore conclude that people with shared phenotypes can be assumed to have the statistically significant differences of their (presumably) shared genotype.
  2. It is therefore okay to make public policy which incorporates the assumptions of those differences.

These are arguments that have been made on this very messageboard. These are racist arguments. Are you saying they are not?

Is that clear, or do you want to remuddy the waters again?

386

So it really is “I know it when I see it”…

387

It’s an important distinction: Chen019 isn’t racist, he’s just judging people by the color of their skin.

388

It’s ironic that one of the things that makes race so hard to discuss is that there is no firm definition of race, but one of the things that makes this particular conversation so difficult is that there is also no firm definition of “biologically meaningful”. Here are a variety of different ways one might define “biologically meaningful”, as it applies to ways-to-group-human-beings:

(1) A set of groups is “biologically meaningful” if brilliant but naive scientists (ie, aliens who come to study human biology and have zero knowledge of or interest in earth culture) would arrive at these (or nearly identical) groupings totally on their own. For instance, they would almost certainly come up with an idea of male vs female that almost precisely matched our own.

(2) A set of groups is “biologically meaningful” if brilliant but naive scientists would come up with a set of groupings which, while clearly different from ours, would have at least some commonality… that is, elements in the same group in our system would be more likely than pure chance to be in the same group in their system. For instance, we might divide people into children, adolescents and adults, while the alien scientists would divide by various other age-related criteria. So the groups would be different, but clearly related.

(3) A set of groups is “biologically meaningful” if we could take those groups, present them as fait accompli to brilliant but naive scientists, and those scientists, using purely biological/genetic factors, would then be able to perfectly measure and define those groups, and sort further individuals into those groups with near-perfect precision.

(4) A set of groups is “biologically meaningful” if we could take those groups, present them as fait accompli to brilliant but naive scientists, and those scientists, using purely biological/genetic factors, would be able to sort further individuals into those groups… not perfectly, but better than pure chance would dictate. (For instance, “I have divided people into groups based on the last digit of their social security number” would presumably fail this test.)

(5) A set of groups is “biologically meaningful” if scientists would active seek information about these groupings while doing various science-y things. For instance, scientists doing large survey health research would almost certainly want to get information about the age and gender of the various subject being studied. Would the scientists spontaneously say “hey, it would be very helpful if we also had grouping-data-X for each of our subjects”? If so, then it’s biologically meaningful.

(6) A set of groups is “biologically meaningful” if scientists who were studying large numbers of people while doing various science-y things might not spontaneously think to ask for this piece of grouping information, but, if they were presented with this grouping information already-existing, would ever possibly find any scientific use for it. (Ie, scientists might not spontaneously ask “hey, which of the ill-defined and socially constructed racial groups does each subject fall into”, but if they happened to have that data along with their information, might notice “hey, people who self-identify as Asian have a higher incidence of condition X, that probably bears further investigation”.)

Now, do I think that race passes any of those tests? I think it likely passes 4, almost certainly passes 6, and possibly passes 2 (note that those are the weaker versions of 3, 5 and 1, respectively). But my point is not to make some positive claim about the usefulness of race. My point is that if you’re making the claim that race is 100% biologically meaningless, then you’re making the fairly extraordinary claim that not only does it not meet any of those 6 criteria I just listed, it also doesn’t meet any other similar such criteria. Unless, that is, you can prove that there is a single well-understood well-defined definition for “biologically meaningful”, which I’m skeptical of.

389

If you want to actually discuss this then join the GD thread, where all that nonsense has already been debunked at length.

I don’t swim in the toilet and I don’t shit in the swimming pool.

390

Which GD thread?

391

This one.

392

I take it you have complained to Oregon State officials for this outrage? I mean they are institutionalising race. Would be curious to see whether other states have similar practices.

393

Visual assessment does not work to determine ‘race’, because there’s no such thing.

Let’s try it again. What are the races? Name them. Or shut the fuck up.

394

In that case I hope you are emailing the racist state government of Oregon for perpetuating such meaningless categories :slight_smile: Ask them exactly what features they look for in the visual assessment. What is [Professor Coyne](the subject of human races, or even the idea that they exist, has become taboo. And this despite the palpable morphological differences between human groups—differences that must be based on genetic differences and would, if seen in other species, lead to their classification as either races or subspecies (the terms are pretty interchangeable in biology).) on about here?

As for some of the races, clearly the State of Oregon have noted these ones. I suggest you correct them.

395

I do not support any type of racism. The State of Oregon is as stupid as you are.

And stop recycling your stupid cites. ‘Professor’ Coyne is on about nonsense. You can not determine a persons genetics by observation of physical characteristics. You’ve been challenged on this before, and your cites have all been challenged, proven to be either nonsense, or something other than what you’ve claimed. Then you quickly run out of cites and start recirculating them again. And none of them agree with each other, because they can’t, because there are no races. If there were, it would be easy too make a list of them.

Let’s try this again. Name the races dumbfuck.

396

I’m sure they do. Call me when the State of Oregon starts publishing papers in reputable journals, will you?

397

That seems to assume an awful lot. But let’s assume for just a second there is something called race…perhaps the five categories mentioned above. There seems to be three possibilities:

  1. the different genetic make-up do not manifest in any way that is noticeable to someone walking down the street

  2. the different genetic make-ups—or, at least, some of them—do manifest themselves in ways that affect outward appearance and can be identified by someone walking down the street

  3. that some different genetic make-ups correlate with certain noticeable physical characteristics to the point that one can reasonably guess a person’s race by looking for certain attributes. For instance, the presence of dark skin and kinky hair.

398

As we’ve shown countless times with many, many examples in these kinds of threads, such “correlation” doesn’t exist with enough certainty to be considered reasonable - especially when it comes to dark skin and kinky hair. Visual assignment of the classic 5 races falls apart fairly quickly.

399

Or how about…

  1. There are more genetic difference withinraces than betweenthem.

Nah, you don’t want to introduce well established scientific facts into your argument, that might lead to uncomfortable conclusions.

Start with an assumption that race exists, then follow through with an assumption that the assumed races have genetic differences, then assume that those genetic difference make black people stupid.

It’ so much easier to construct an argument when you don’t let all those inconvenient facts get in the way.

400

Just so we are clear, for you the critical point is that the “10” is greater than the “0.63”, and that therefore (according to you), the variation between categories is greater than the variation within a category?

And is it your position that racial categories do NOT allow one to make reliable predictions, analogous to the predictions that people with high BMI are at greater risk of esophogeal cancer?