That’s a matter of opinion. Most likely motivated by political considerations. Supposedly Three-body problem - Wikipedia is challenging. And yet in human populations 100% is required? Why? Politics.
No one would argue that if a pug was raised as a greyhound that a pug would win that race.
Well defined genetic population means what, precisely? What exactly is a species?
What’s that comparison supposed to mean? Are you trying to make out that it’s somehow unfair to require scientific rigor in neurogenetics because solving the three-body problem in physics is hard? That makes no sense whatsoever.
Plenty of very complicated biological theories are well supported scientifically (e.g., evolution). In fact, many specifically genetic theories are well supported scientifically (e.g., concerning dominant and recessive alleles in Mendelian inheritance). But the subject of the nature and role of genetic factors in human intelligence is still very, very, very poorly understood. That’s not a “political” assessment, that’s a scientific one. Neurogenetics researchers themselves are the first to acknowledge it.
Like I said, you don’t get to pretend that an unverified speculation is a valid theory just because you’re talking about a field that’s too new and too complex to have successfully established valid theories at this stage.
*“Waaaahhh!! Mommy, why don’t I get to play with mainstream accepted theories like the kids in the Physics and Climate Science clubs do? It’s not faaaaair!! It’s just mean old politiiiiiics!!” :mad:
“Now now, little octopus, don’t cry. The difference is that your favorite field is much younger and isn’t developed enough yet to have mainstream theories. But it will keep growing and will eventually have lots of interesting theories for you to play with!” *
No, they would not, but that has jack-shit to do with comparing abilities between humans of different racial categories. See my response to stillownedbysetters above to understand why pet breeds aren’t analogous to human racial categories in any scientifically fruitful way.
One of the ways a population (unlike a racial category) can be genetically well defined is when all the members of that population are more closely related to one another than they are to anybody outside that population. (Which I also explained already in my response to stillownedbysetters.)
What does that have to do with this issue? You do realize that all humans belong to the same species, right? The issue of how to determine criteria for a formal species description is not relevant to comparing traits among different members of the human species.
No, in fact you did not. You made a vague and incorrect, inaccurate references showing you did not understand Kimstu.
Funny how these type of responses completely ignore the actual genetic information that people like Kimstu present and go to the asserting of the Politics (and the distorting, straw man claim of 100%…).
It speaks directly to what is the frame of the understanding.
And of course it is the case that the ongoing research shows that the biological operation of the genetic expression is more and more complicated than initial simple theories had held, with the expression of genes influenced by the environmental factors and this even echoing in expression in later generations.
Since the actual scientists know that it is not so simple that person X has the gene allele Y and so it has effect Z, even on the individual level, it is yet more unsupported to have the sweeping conclusion built on the false suppositions of the genetical solidarity of the incoherent 19th c superstition of the races (and even worse when it is a supposition about the mixed blacks of the Americas).
these silly comparisons are in some way useful for showing how bad the thinking of the “race realists” is.
Of course it is more like: “this Brown dog with a long nose is fast. Therefore all the Brown dogs with noses that are not short are fast. And this means that they also are probably dumber than the white Terriers who are obviously clever.” And claiming it is politics to point out the brown dogs that have the not-short noses have not the morphological and not the genetic consistency to make a general conclusion around the brown dogs with the not-short noses, even though this was the theory and the tale that is popular since the 19th century…
Your OP relates “race” to “science” and “scientific discussion”. When I post an OP asking what’s wrong with a “scientific discussion” of “personality”, feel free to ask me to define my terms then.
That is easy, the word is used to describe the sociological or the cultural interpretation / framing of the biological sex divisions, for example the wikipedia introduction
So you illustrate the naive objection you make (the same can be done for the other terms) is based on a weak and superficial understanding - it is a false response.
If you think that all of these questions have settled definitions in the scientific community, it would seem that we have found one of the issues that renders the question of the OP so problematic.
In point of fact, several of these terms do not have a scientific definition. Intelligence is definitely among those questions that do not yet have a “scientific definition,” (or, at least, a single definition that applies in all cases to all species and all individuals), the proponents of g notwithstanding.
Gender, for example, is being revisited almost daily.
For several years men from northern Europe and especially Iceland dominated the “World’s Strongest Man” competition. And for the population size of Iceland (about 300,000), you would wonder if their was a genetic component.
But I wonder if this has more to do with how the athletes are recruited for the competition.
And, of course, the best evidence these poor tenured faculty are under attack for allowing themselves to put together thoughts of “east africans”, “marathons”, and “genetics” at the same time is right here: only click here if you really want to know the truth.
I only hope the SDMB can keep multiple copies of this important topic on the first page of Great Debates so that we can eventually get to the bottom of it by making the exact same arguments over and over again without any effort put into learning by the participants.
On a more serious note, Urbanredneck, I wonder why we see the genes of East Africans failing them in ultra-marathons.
If there are differences in athletic abilities across races, there could be other differences across races. Not “there are” - there could be. That underlies all the denial that SIRE constitutes a subset, or a population, or a True Scotsman.
No no Dibble it is only politics that we do not see the great Truth that Brown Haired Dogs are a Race and the Very Important Possibility that they all are sharing the inferior differences. It is only some “politics” that could lead to one to pay attention to the actual genetics datas or the observation that there is no science based reason in this data to presume the Brown Haired dogs share the same genetic heritages… They’re BROWN! Can you not see it?
When it comes to race and science, I’d put it this way:
It’s not very useful to find that Group A is smarter than Group B, say, since it’s an average with a lot of overlap. If you’re hiring someone for a job, better to actually assess them as an individual. If you’re trying to find genetic correlates of intelligence, again, better to individually assess the candidates and sort them into groups on that basis.
So why do so many people want to talk about these averages so much?
Well, it’s because it comes very naturally to us to generalize and be tribal. We want to be able to look at people and immediately categorize them.
Even if we accept that there are “outliers” day to day we want to make some mental judgement about everyone of a particular appearance.
So in summary, not useful, only causes divisions in society. That’s why science tends to steer clear.
Addressing the OP more specifically, I would guess that there are some advantageous genes for certain sports that certain groups have a greater prevelance of. It’s difficult to separate that out from different numbers of people participating in said sports and the level of focus they apply. And blacks as a group are extremely genetically diverse, at the least it would be something like “People of West African ancestry are on average faster sprinters”.
You were saying? The problem is YOUR politics cloud your mind.
How convenient. Humpty Dumpty would be pleased.
Genetics play some role. Culture/environment play some role. Interesting question is how much of a role does genetics play in culture?
You might want to look a bit at set theory. No one is claiming all black is X or all white is Y. The claim and evidence is that the distribution within black and white is different. Now even if black is 500 diverse ethnic sets and white is 100 diverse ethnic sets (as an example) and even if the sprinting gene (as an example) is only in 1 of those 500 it’s still more disproportionate in the black set. It’s not as precise but it’s still true.
And yet these racist rags are reporting on how genes influence voting!
Where is their 100.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000% with triple blind and repeatable studies? How do we know it’s not the amount of selenium in the soils these people live near? How do we know it’s not the phase of the moon they were conceived under?
Well since you are copying posts in from some other thread I have no idea about, I keep my opinion and my statement (since I am participating in this thread, not some other one I never read).
Of course you demonstrate in your posts you can not tell the difference between the idea of the “race” of “black people” and the idea of a discrete and coherent genetic population.
What “Politics” is that?
I see you making political claims off of your strong American political ideological position, but I have no political claims in this.
There is the science - not the strange straw man distortions you make of course but the actual science.
(how the citations to an opinion article in a newspaper you percived as Left and the Huffington post make any point other than to show the politicized interpretation you have I do not understand)
*