Regardless of willful ignorance. Genetics like the rest of biology, chemistry, and physics do not have a human exclusion to assure the PC. And the issue, again, is not 100% unobtainable knowledge of precise mechanisms.
What does this even mean? What is the meaning of the phrases “a human exclusion” and “to assure the PC”?
Resorting to gibberish to disguise your illogical thinking is not going to be a winning strategy for you long-term.
Do we or do we not live in a universe governed by physics? Is there even real free will for example? What mechanism provides that? If even thoughts are a function of your circuitry and natural law doesn’t it follow that most of what a human is is due to the physical structure of that human? Where does that structure come from?
This seems to be the crux of what you are saying, and it is precisely the opposite of what that paper proves. This study flat out demonstrates that one can take a swab of the inner lining of your cheek and use it to very reliably determine whether someone is going to self identifying as black, and even reliably tell whether they are African American vs. African, based solely on genetic markers.
So, you think that the people who self identified as “African American” would not have self identified as “black”? You think that had they asked people to use the term “black” instead that there wouldn’t have been a genetic difference? I think that’s a pretty extraordinary claim, but it’s a hypothesis that is testable. But, it would have to be tested before it is in any way useful.
Of course there is variation within each group. But, the variation between groups is bigger. And that’s a great thing. I’m glad that there are different populations of people with different traits. The world is a better place for it.
But that’s just saying that genetic heritage (a very detailed and precise biological characteristic, or rather set of biological characteristics) typically tells us something about race (a very loosely defined broad physico-sociocultural category).
What we’re talking about here is the exact reverse of that: i.e., the reason that racial category is not considered a biologically-based category is that racial category is not a reliable or precise indicator of genetic heritage.
[QUOTE=Fiveyearlurker]
and even reliably tell whether they are African American vs. African, based solely on genetic markers.
[/quote]
Yes, nobody’s disputing that genetic testing tells us a lot about genetic heritage. But that’s not the issue you raised when you said you didn’t understand why biologists consider race not to be a biologically-based category.
I think that if the researchers had classified people based on the racial category “black”, that classification would not have successfully distinguished between the African-Americans and the Africans. Which is what the study was seeking to do in the first place.
Sure, me too. But a vague racial category like “black” is NOT the same thing as a genetic population.
Which is why if you just looked at a group of “black” people from the US and Africa without knowing their history, language etc., you would need actual genetic testing to tell the African-Americans from the Africans, and to determine what their genetic traits are.
Which is why “race” is NOT a biological, i.e., genetic, classification. [headdesk] [headdesk]
It is a strategy, however, that got Ben Carson into the race for president.
<keanu reeves>Whoa!<keanu reeves>
Stranger
Yes. (At least, we have no reason to believe that any empirically/rationally perceptible aspect of the universe, which as far as we can know is the only type of aspect that the universe has, is not subject to physical laws.)
[QUOTE=octopus]
Is there even real free will for example?
[/quote]
“Free will” is a metaphysical concept. If you’re using the term to mean some material natural phenomenon subject to physical laws, you have to precisely define it as such before we can tell whether it has any existence.
[QUOTE=octopus]
What mechanism provides that?
[/quote]
Depends on what, if anything, you mean by “free will” as a material phenomenon.
[QUOTE=octopus]
If even thoughts are a function of your circuitry and natural law doesn’t it follow that most of what a human is is due to the physical structure of that human?
[/quote]
“Thoughts” is also a metaphysical concept. Exactly what material natural phenomenon are you using the word “thoughts” to refer to?
Same goes for the extremely vague expression “what a human is”.
[QUOTE=octopus]
Where does that structure come from?
[/QUOTE]
Finally, a scientifically meaningful question. The physical structure of a human is determined by genetic inheritance, disorders of the genome, fetal environment, and a large number of postnatal environmental factors including nutrition, disease and trauma.
Have you ever looked at your hand? I mean, really looked at it?
Anybody can look at your hand. To gain true insight, you must look thru the hand.
Stranger
All that linked GWAS study show is that you can show (mostly West) African ancestry in African Americans. Big whoop. It also says that those African-Americans are distinct from the African groups (and that various African groups are distinct from each other) - so are you saying “African American” is a distinct race? Because that’s the coherent and discrete group identified by that study, based on the internal lack of genetic structure within that cohort vs the African one.
Threads like this remind me of a question on OK Cupid: “Would you participate in a rape fantasy if your partner wanted you to?” Just by weighing in you are going to be misread (probably grievously) by someone.
Nonetheless (gulp)…
I am not a scientist so this all may just be over my head. Is the subject so “tremendously fucking complicated” because of research difficulties, or because by and large, people are terrified by what thorough research might reveal?
Is there some kind of scientific principle indicating that evidence and/or proof of these sort of potential genetic differences could only emerge slowly? Is there something about this type of discovery that makes it intrinsically difficult to establish?
Consider the discovery that the Earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa. That occurred rather suddenly, I believe. In retrospect we can see the delay in accepting that (now) obvious fact was due largely to societal friction, and not so much a difficulty in demonstrating and cross-checking the evidence.
Could it be that demonstrable proof of “racial” differences is similarly a problem of social-political obstruction and not one of scientific observation? After all, it’s not exactly a popular topic to examine… not a whole lot of research grants are being offered to those eager to look into this. Who is even be motivated to discover significant differences in the abilities of different “races” other than those with an axe to grind (racists on one hand and militant egalitarians on the other)?
If the question were not so controversial and therefore vigorously examined by myriad top-notch scientists, might we not know a lot more facts that society would currently prefer ignore?
The former more than the latter, I’d say - human genetics and related subjects are a very complicated thing.
Going by what I know about bioinformatics, yes, slow and steady is the way of things. No-one’s going to be having a Eureka moment in this particular field, it looks like.
HA ha ha. Spoken like someone completely unaware of the existence of thePioneer Fund.
Well I say again: what use is there in finding such average differences?
If the statement “All dyslexics are black” were true, then it becomes a useful observation, as we can skip testing anyone who’s white and makes it somewhat easier to try to find associated genes.
But just: "This group is on average more X than that group, with considerable overlap? Who cares, it’s not useful.
Well, to answer my own question: some people care, because they want ammunition to generalize and be bigots.
I’ve read this paper. If that was what they were seeking to do, they probably should have mentioned it somewhere in there. You’re now making the extraordinary claim that you (apparently reluctantly) accept that there are specific and definable genetic markers that differentiate African Americans from Europeans, which is what this study proved, but that there are not specific and definable genetic markers that would differentiate people that self identify as “black” from Europeans. That’s fine as far as hypotheses go, but based on this publication, is very unlikely. And a strange hill to fight this unnecessary argument on.
No. What this paper clearly shows is that you would just have to ask them how the identified. Or you could not ask them and not worry about it.
Like poetasters, only with science.
I can hear someone arguing that knowing “group tendencies” might help with screening, diagnostics, and/or intervention strategies.
But that argument doesn’t convince me. If I show up at the doctor’s office and rattle off a bunch of symptoms indicative of, say, sickle cell anemia, they aren’t going to look at the color of my skin to make that diagnosis. No, they are going to look at the shape of my blood cells. Just as I’d hope they do with anyone else.
Let’s say there’s a genetic marker common in northern Europeans and their descendants that confers a high risk of neuroticism. Would it make sense for a psychiatrist to approach a patient meeting this genetic profile any different than any other patient in the absence of a positive DNA test? No.
I have a personal experience that makes me a bit touchy about this topic. As most Dopers know, I am a black American. I also have an adult-onset tic disorder. When the symptoms became too prominent for me to ignore, I went to a neurologist for a diagnosis. Quite reasonably, he wanted to eliminate Huntington’s Disease. I don’t have family history of the condition, but sometimes it can appear somewhat spontaneously, due to the nature of the underlying mutation. But he didn’t want to stop there. Because I’m black, he also wanted to test me for a very rare genetic condition that is disproportionately found in black South Africans (and even then, it’s found in just a few families).
He never asked me if I had South African ancestry, recent or otherwise. He didn’t ask if I had any idea where my African ancestry hails from. For all he knew, I was a second generation Nigerian or Kenyan. He never even asked me if I’m the descendent of African slaves.
This bothered me a lot. It also bothered me that he didn’t consider any of the rare genetic disorders that are common among other ethnicities. My racial appearance is ambiguous enough that he should have had more than one continent in mind. There was so much about my genetics that he didn’t know because he never thought to ask. But he saw that I was black. That’s all he needed to know, apparently.
I declined to get that test done since I couldn’t afford to pay $3000 to get an answer I already knew. And I refused to go back to that doctor.
Metaphysical? You know what is meant by free will. So if humans are governed by physics it would seem that the genetic code that contributes to the structure of the body would actually be meaningful as well it is in every other non PC organism.
I just looked at it for over 20 minutes. Then I looked at my feet. They are enigmas.
Should we only pursue science that matters?
I think Monstro’s post raises a very interesting question. A lot of people in this thread have been commenting that race is such a vague concept that it’s useless to science. But physical racial appearance can at least give hints towards genetic heritage.
A question I’ve frequently asked in threads like this is the following: suppose a doctor has noticed a troubling uptick in occurrences of a particular medical condition, and has noticed that it has occurred almost entirely in patients who appear “black”. Now, it would be ridiculous for that doctor to say “ooh, black people all share the same genetic heritage, I found the cause!”. But it would also be ridiculous for the doctor to say “hmm, well, that looks like a pattern, but I know well that ‘race’ is just a social construct, so I’m not even going to mention that pattern to anyone, lest I be laughed at for not realizing what enormous genetic diversity there is in Africa”.
Rather, that information should be treated as a possible clue, worthy of further investigation.