IMO I think the evidence I’ve looked at probably, or even almost certainly, rules it out for blacks in general. For sub-groups it does not.
So we’re close :).
- Tamerlane
So can I take it that your position is that there is some genetic feature that is universal to and exclusive among Ashkenazi Jews?
Well, my question wasn’t about what is implied by the evidence. It was about what is implied by your “no race” position.
And note that the question was phrased disjunctively.
Care to take another crack?
P.S. For the record I agree that to the extent that blacks enjoy a genetic advantage in short-distance running, that advantage would appear to be concentrated in one or more sub-groups.
My “no race” position ( in the limited respect I define that position in regards to humans in particular ), does indeed rule out blacks in general from having a small genetic advantage in short-distance running. It does not rule it out for smaller sub-populations of blacks as they do not fall under the definition of “race” I use to define my “no race” stance.
This is my current position based on the evidence I have seen ( which I do not care to go over again, thank-you-very-much ). I reserve the right to alter that position in the future as new evidence is presented.
Better?
- Tamerlane
On further reflection, I retract this. Because the genetic coherence would be an indicator that the population is relatively closed, from a breeding standpoint. Which, in turn, is what makes possible the founder effect, and enhances the impact of the genetic drift.
Well, you changed my question yet again, this time by omitting the word “average.” You may think I’m nitpicking, but I think there’s an important point there.
For example, it may very well be that, on average, whites are more likely to carry the Tay-Sachs allele than are others. Nevertheless, this fact arguably does not imply that “whites” are a coherent group, genetically (whatever that means).
lucwarm: Ah, I see. Your reasoning is that if small genetic advantages of the sort we are talking about could conceivably exist in a sub-population of blacks and if we posit that no such gifted sub-population exists among whites, then on average blacks in general could be said to have a small genetic advantage over whites and that therefore my “no race” stance doesn’t enter the picture as an objection. In a technical sense, I suppose you are correct - I yield to your inexorable logic :). Except…
If we are talking about a very small genetic advantage to begin with, and we mostly seem to be, and if we are talking about limited sub-populations of blacks ( and I would argue we are, if there is anything to it at all ), then I think I have the same objection as I had to Izzy’s “whites with Tay-Sachs example”. A small difference averaged into a much larger population yields an infitesimal difference. Izzy said ( and I never actually replied to this point ):
The reply I never made was, yes, it’s not meaningless - It’s just not particularly meaningful ( especially as who knows what level we are talking about here - o vs 1/10,000,000? - you got me shrug ). I still would object to " blacks in general have a small average genetic advantage" from a practical standpoint, because however technically correct it may be ( if it even is ), it would obscure the real situation and not be an accurate generalization for most blacks. And my objection to the phrase would still derive, ultimately, from my “no race” stance.
- Tamerlane
Well, am I safe in assuming that you object to ANY generalization that is technically correct but which applies more accurately to some subgroup of the group in question?
Nope, not a safe assumption. Case by case evaluation.
“I’ll be the judge, I’ll be the jury, said cunning old Fury.”
- Tamerlane
Ok, so you don’t have a principled reason for your objection?
sigh I consider it perfectly principled lucwarm. I’m not going to nail myself down by saying I’d take the same stance on every single issue, because I probably wouldn’t take the same stance on every single issue. One doesn’t compare apples and oranges in the same way. It’s technically correct that the average mushroom you encounter in the wild could be dangerously toxic. This only really applies to a small ( tiny ) subset of mushrooms, but it is a useful enough generalization to keep in mind if you are not an expert, because one bad experience can end your life. Remember the old saying about foolish consistency…
It seems pretty obvious to me why the phrase I object to isn’t of much utility, apparently it doesn’t to you. The fact that I seem incapable of convincing you I’m correct, doesn’t imply any lack of internal consistency to me, apparently it does to you. I fear we are at an impasse, as I don’t think I can explain myself any better.
You ( apparently ) think it is perfectly okay to say that “blacks in general may have a small genetic advantage on average compared to all other groups”, based on the possibility that some limited populations we would colloquially refer to as black, might posses such an advantage. I’m not okay with that statement, because a) bereft of the trailing modifiers and explanations, it implies a biological coherence to the group “black” that I consider unwarranted ( my “no race” objection ) and b) bereft of the trailing modifiers and explanations, it implies all blacks potentially have such an advantage. I consider your “technically correct” phrase to be misleading and not terribly useful.
There we sit, unresolvable as far as I can see and probably at a terminal point in the argument. Especially as I’m not going to spend hours debating multiple examples of the above - It would probably just give me a headache.
- Tamerlane
I have taken longer than I wanted to clone that gene, and now I am battling a deathly cold. I apologize for abandoning the debate for so long. I also apologize for the length of this post.
To field a softball question first: the answer is easy – they are different mutations in the HEXA (hexosaminidase A) gene. Ashkenazim mostly have a 4 bp insertion into an exon, but 78 mutations in HEXA have been found. Why they pop up all of the time is interesting and largely unknown. It could be due to genetic drift and founder effect, as mentioned above. It could also be due to some evolutionary selection (like HbS sickle cell trait in malaria-prone populations).
To get to the point of the OP. Or something. We can make a lot of very correct statements with little scientific relevance. We can put all types of arbitrary lines around groups, we can make all kinds of foolish statements that are factually correct.
Sometimes, these statements may even have predictive value. African Americans get sickle cell disease more often than white Americans. White Americans get Tay Sachs disease more often than African Americans. These statements are true, nobody can argue with them. I have never attempted to argue with them (see my statements about the utility of race as a shortcut in diagnosis).
When we make these statements, we base our characterizations on one trait: skin color. The fact that this is a codominant trait allows us to follow it through numerous generations. A person who is 1/4 African descent (because both parents are 1/2 African descent) may still be identified as African American, and may still have identifiably dark skin, but 3/4 of their alleles are not of African descent. In other circumstances (for instance 1 of 4 grandparents were black, unbeknownest to our patient), a person may not identify himself as African American. Yet, again, 1/4 of his alleles are of African descent. And both people have the exact same chance of having an HbS allele. And as I will mention, the rest of these “African” alleles are nothing special.
We start to see a problem with putting definitions down. “African American” or “black” as I see it is solely based on skin color. “Prone to sickle cell disease” as I see it is based on descent from malarial regions. While the two Venn diagrams overlap to a certain degree, there is no relationship between the correlation and causation. This is the crux of what I am trying to argue here. If we want to draw a line around a race, we do it almost entirely based on skin color. The fact that these categories overlap – both based on oligogenic (HbS is monogenic, skin color is a few genes) codominant traits – has absolutely no relevance on anything else in the genome. Intelligence and athletic prowess are far more likely to be shuffled because they are polygenic. The fact that warm climate traits and malaria traits overlap has to do with the properties of Plasmodium falciparum, ovale, malariae, and vivax, not with any human genetic traits.
So, back to lucwarm and grienspace and Izzy’s “outlier” claims. No. The increased genetic diversity of the population of Africa has abolutely no relevance on an individual level. First, there are few “private” alleles to Africa – most alleles in Africa are seen elsewhere because of the migrations and interbreedings of humans through the eons. The only ones that are not I would wager are recent mutations feeding on founder effect and genetic drift in isolated populations. Second, the increased genetic diversity in Africa just represents the ancestry of humanity on the African continent. The earliest humans were there, and the earliest migrations and population expansions happened there. So the genetic distance between the Khoisan and the Ethiopians and the Bantu and the whatever is big. The genetic differences between individuals of the same tribe in Nigeria is not bigger than the genetic differences between individuals of the same tribe in France. The slave trade did not evenly sample all populations of Africa: the most genetically different were in fact IIRC excluded – Khoisan and pygmies and those groups were not taken for slaves. So the genetic diversity in African Americans cannot be large. IMHO, their African alleles are not special, they are not more diverse.
We have to make a distinction on what we see in the individual African versus what we see at the level of the population of Africa in general. The individual Khoisan, the individual Nigerian, the individual Ethiopian does not have a far greater selection of alleles availible to him as he selects a mate from his own group of people. The continent of Africa, as a whole, does. But Khoisan don’t mix with Ethiopians usually. This is not an absolute line – there is of course genetic flow between the populations, but in most instances I cannot imagine that it is any greater (or any less) than genetic flow between the European and African groups, the African and Asian groups, and the Asian and European groups. See the end of my next paragraph for the resolution of apparent contradictions.
Next, the whole species versus ring species versus transitional form debate. I will say that perhaps I did oversimplify, but I will stand by the claim that at any given time, it is quite possible to draw a line around a species by looking at individuals who are fertile and produce fertile offspring. There is a genetic relevance to doing so – gene flow can exist (ignoring oddball genetic occurances like lateral transmission). This is not to say that no other quantifiable genetic groups can exist – perhaps I was not clear enough. Inbred mouse strains and dog breeds are good examples (inbred strains are better examples, though). One may even argue that these are steps along the line to speciation. I maintain that this doesn’t apply to races. We can find no unifying genetic similarity between the races besides skin color and a few facial features. So, we end up with subgroups with different genetics: populations like the Khoisan and Ethiopians. There has been restricted gene flow between them and their neighbors leading to interesting genetic phenomena. There is still gene flow, though, and the restriction has been very short term in the overall scheme of things. So they are far, far, far less separate than what you would see in isolated animal populations or inbred strains such as dog breeds and mice.
But, if we define “race” to be around individual populations, then we get closer to a scientifically defensible position. Instead of now having five races, we end up with hundreds. And nobody here has tried to do that. Grouping them together as “blacks” is no more scientific than grouping Basques and Moors as Spaniards, and expecting to make scientific predictions about the genetics of Spaniards.
In short. There are few private alleles in Africans. Increased genetic diversity is only relevant when you look at the population of Africa as a whole. In all probability, African Americans don’t share it. There is no uniting genetic similarity amongst all Africans, or Europeans, or Asians. There are different populations in Africa, but none of us some to be implying that these are different races. These populations may have some rare private alleles, but all in all, their genetic diversity is based on different percentages of common alleles. Humanity is a continuum of genetic diversity; there are certainly differences at the extremes, but there are no clear gaps in the continuum in which to draw lines. Yes, there are differences in populations. No, there is no cohesive way to group populations into races. Yes, we can make statements about races that have some utility. No, the utility of these statements does not reflect an underlying genetic phenomenon.
In conclusion, I have mentioned before that I am just a student. I don’t purport to know most things, and I am certainly not an expert on most of this field. Just a hobbiest. Laziness and neatness has made me omit “IMHO” and “IIRC” in front of most of the statements of fact in the above post. While I am pretty well-read and I try to keep up with the literature, some of my opinions are bound to change. As you well know, few things in science are gospel truth or sacred cows. If you can present an argument which I consider to be irrefutable, or data comes out which neatly refutes my arguments, my views will change. Flame me for being inconsistent, I think that I will call it “an open mind.”
It’s not a matter of whether or not you take the same stance, it’s a matter of whether or not you apply the same standard. If that standard gives different results for apples than it does for oranges, then fine. However, if you have a different standard for apples then for oranges, you have what’s known as a “double-standard.”
So it seems to me that if your position is “perfectly principled,” then you should be comfortable applying your reasoning to other areas.
The fact that you are (apparently) not willing to do so suggests to me that your position is informed by political concerns.
And I would add that your objection in and of itself is not as troubling to me as the issue that IzzyR brought up. See, let’s suppose somebody asks whether black dominance in short-distance running can be explained by genetics. It may be misleading to say “yes.” However, it is far more misleading, IMHO, to argue (or imply, or suggest) that a lack of genetic coherence in blacks (whatever that means) implies that the answer must be “no.”
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Well, is “utility” your standard?
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Well, it’s not exactly that you haven’t convinced me, it’s that you seem to be refusing to offer a principled reason for your objection.
Welcome back.
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Well, I’m not sure why you are referring to “Americans” here, but in any event, in another thread, you said this:
emphasis supplied.
It seems to me that you have flat out contradicted yourself. Are you making an exception for alleles that provide some advantage in tropical climates? For alleles that have effects in conjunction with other alleles? (You seem to be suggesting this in your most recent post.)
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I don’t recall having made an “outlier” claim (whatever that means). Would you care to point out where I have done so?
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Why are you making this point? Do you feel it contradicts anything that anyone has said in this thread?
**
I for one have no problem with you changing your mind. However, (and I’m not necessarily accusing you of doing any of the following), if you change your position from post to post, or thread to thread, without acknowledging that you have done so, I have a problem. If you claim that you never argued something that you did in fact argue, I have a problem. If you ignore the difficult and challenging questions posed to you and instead relentlessy push down strawmen, I have a problem. And if you misrepresent other people’s positions, I have a problem.
Speaking of “difficult and challenging” questions, I believe I asked a couple questions in this thread that might apply to you. Why not take a crack at them? Here’s one:
Can you point to explicitly what you believe to be a contradiction? What statements actually contradict each other?
If edwino asks this question, I’ll be happy to answer it.
You however, have repeatedly ignored challenging but fair questions I have put to you. You have also repeatedly misrepresented my position and changed your own position without acknowledging as such.
Most people in your position would have disappeared from the thread in shame by now. A few would have owned up to what they had done. However, you continue to post as if nothing had happened. I have to assume that you are not here to debate or discuss anything but just to stir people up.
I’m not going to encourage you by answering a question that edwino can and should ask if he likes.
Actually, as I have already noted when I began withdrawing from this thread, the charges that you lay against me are exactly what I had pointed out you were doing earlier.
Which brings us back to the point that I have made repeatedly, and for some reason has failed to sink in - or even to be acknowledged much, frankly.
If you see a discussion of, say, whether genital size might differ between African Americans and White Americans (or any of these other topics - athletics, intelligence etc. etc.), and you feel that no such difference has “scientific relevance”, then by all means say that it has no scientific relevance. And if you think you can independently make a case - in a straightforward manner - that no such difference exists, by all means do that too. But don’t imply that the lack of scientific relevance itself means that no difference can exist. And perhaps as importantly don’t imply that those who argue in favor of the difference existing are arguing in favor of scientific relevance. It should not be too much to ask.
This is about as bizarre as anything I’ve seen yet it these threads. This notion was put forth in this thread by DSeid. Your response was:
When I pointed out that you yourself had claimed otherwise, you responded in a most confusing manner, but seemed to essentially retract your statement of support. Now you have suddenly decided to attribute the entire notion to “lucwarm and grienspace and Izzy” for the purpose of attacking it. What’s up with that? 
Would you mind pointing out where and how I have misrepresented your position?
Where did I say this?