Probably not. If you are unable to answer a few simple, reasonable yes or no questions about your position, it is unlikely that I will ever be able to understand it.
What about if you’re unable to give “precise, objective definitions for racial categories”, despite repeated requests?
Cite? Or apologize for posting a strawman and sin no more.
Speaking of answering simple questions, since you’ve been referencing “overweight” and “obese” people, is Will Smith obese?
Also, what “race” is Will Smith?
Can you explain why you are asking that question?
See definitions provided above (eg. O’Brien & Mayr 1991). See those used in the thread on a meaningful biological definition of race. There are also a number of definitions for species too btw. You could look at how the concept is applied generally. Above you tried to assert that these could not apply to humans, but I responded why I think your objections don’t stand up.
Again, here’s the definition Jerry Coyne used:
Another from the definition thread:
Here’s more on the turtle approach:
Uh huh.
The largest nations on the continent of Asia are Russia, China, India, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.
So according to your scheme, Russians, Chinese, Indians, Kazakhis, Saudisand Indonesiansare all the same race?
Is that correct?
Or are you now going to move the goalposts once again, and tell use that, despite all those nationalities having the exact same continental ancestry, they are not the same race at all?
See, this is what Chen always does. He makes a claim that race = continental ancestry. Then when we point out how ridiculous it is to lump Vladimir Putin, Osama bin Laden. Mahatma Gandhi and Bruce Lee into the same race, he then squirms away and tells us that race isn’t “about continental ancestry” at all, it’s about some other manner of categorisation.
Or perhaps he will try the old favourite of claiming that only Chinese are “True Asians”, and that the rest don’t put sugar in their porridge. Errr, I mean the rest are transitional groups between “True Asians” and other races. Considering that those others, and people indistinguishable from them, occupy land that makes up ~75% of the continent, such a claim is amusing to say the least. Any scheme that fails to map onto 3/4 of the designated area is hardly reconcilable to the “geographically distinct” group" that Chen claims that these races are.
You asked me to post here instead of the other thread, so here I am. With a question. I don’t understand why it’s so confusing to think that there might be an Asian race, but over time various subsets of Asians have dispersed to other areas, and while there, have each taken on characteristic unique to themselves. Isn’t this perfectly in line with Darwin’s Finches? Just because the finches eventually came to be quite distinct from one another, that didn’t erase their “finchness”. Did it? It doesn’t seem surprising to me that as a group broke up that those groups would then start to acquire traits unique unto them. Where do we disagree?
We apparently disagree about the need for evidence.
See, there is no evidence for a race that includes Vladimir Putin, Osama bin Laden. Mahatma Gandhi and Bruce Lee. No genetic evidence. No archaeological evidence. No palaeontological evidence. No physiological evidence. No morphological evidence. No linguistic evidence. No historical evidence.
No evidence. Nada. Nothing. Not a sausage.
What you say may be perfectly plausible. Plausibilty isn’t the issue. The issue is that there is simply no evidence of any sort to support such a claim. Vladimir Putin, Osama bin Laden. Mahatma Gandhi and Bruce Lee share absolutely nothing in common aside from having lots of ancestors who lived on the massive continent that we call “Asia”. which is itself an arbitrary and subjective descriptor.
If they were all different forms of some sort of Asian race, wouldn’t you expect that to leave some sort of evidence, somewhere? And more importantly, with the total lack of any evidence that these people are just different morphs of some ancestral Asian race, why would you believe that they were? I assume that you generally only believe things because there is some evidnece that they are true.
So why make an exception in this case?
Blake, you’re still stuck on a definition of race that must include some objective aspect to define who’s in and who’s out. As I’ve been using the term, I just mean a subjectively selected group of people that share common characteristics (i.e., like a gender).
Thing is, humans are not that distinct. Pick the most “Asian” male specimen you can find, and mate him with the most distinctly “unAsian” female you can find - barring some health problem specific to one or both of these two individuals, they can successfully mate and produce offspring that themselves can successfully mate. There’s actually less diversity among humans, even humans seperated by thousands of years and thousands of kilometers, than among finches spread across the relatively small area of the Galapagos.
The only thing I am stuck on is whether your usage of race is scientifically valid. You know, the whole point of this thread?
And as we have explained to you ad nauseum, in this thread and in others, if your definition is not objective, it is not scientific.
For about the 15th time: science is the study of objective reality. If you are positing something subjective then it is not, can not be, scientifically valid.
As we have demonstrated conclusively in this thread, sex is not in any sense a subjectively selected group. It is objective.
You have already conceded this point. Why bother trying to drag it back in?
Race is a subjective, social label, with essentially no objective, scientific truth, and what little may be construed as scientifically supported is as a result of the concept of race being vague and hence able to incorporate all sorts of separate scientific information into a spurious framework.
Gender is similarly a subjective, social label, however it’s closely based on the scientific truth of biological sex; gender being the conceptions and value judgements ascribed to the biological sexes.
Hence it’s a spurious comparison to make; race is subjective labelling based on pseudo-science, gender is subjective labelling based on actual biology.
Blake, it’s like we’re trying to stick jello to a wall here. You keep using these terms in a fetishistic way without demonstrating any understanding of the concepts we’ve been over and over and over.
Now on to your specific points.
This is idiocy, pure and simple. As I and others have explained to you, in this thread and others, subjectively defined categories can be useful in science. It can make sense to talk about the incidence of diseases among “non-smokers” v. “smokers.” There’s nothing objective about the boundaries of those two categories. A person who smokes one cigar a year on their birthday could be put into either category, and that’s OK.
Similarly, as long as a scientist explains how they assigned people to a race for purposes of a study, there’s nothing wrong with the fact that the boundaries of each category are subjectively determined.
You haven’t demonstrated that, and I haven’t conceded it. You dragged some 95% confidence number out of your ass and treated it like gold. If you look at gender in all its possibilities, the only possible conclusion is that there are people who are neither male nor female, and it takes a subjective determination to determine if the are one or the other.
The continental ancestry approach is used by Risch in the paper I linked above.
As the Turtle Taxonomy recommendations suggest - you’re looking at describing the major patterns of variation within a species.
For example McEvoy et al 2010:
Obviously you can get into endless debates over what is meant by “major” (ie. lumpers vs splitters). You could split those groups up further as discussed here on Dienekes anthropology site.
No, they both involve subjective labelling based on “actual biology.” Of course you could say that oceans, mountains and other labels used in nature are subjective.
Also, what about race as used in biology for other species? Is that “pseudo science”?
Hey, Chen, how about answering the question, rather thnaposting anothe rirrelvant spam-link that oyyou have utterly misunderstood. I didn’t ask what you misinterpreted Risch as saying. I asked what you are saying.
According to your scheme are Russians, Chinese, Indians, Kazakhis, Saudis and Indonesians are all the same race?
Or are you now going to move the goalposts once again, and tell use that, despite all those nationalities having the exact same continental ancestry, they are not the same race at all?
See, this is what Chen always does. He makes a claim that race = continental ancestry. Then when we point out how ridiculous it is to lump Vladimir Putin, Osama bin Laden. Mahatma Gandhi and Bruce Lee into the same race, he then squirms away and tells us that race isn’t “about continental ancestry” at all, it’s about some other manner of categorisation.
Or perhaps he will try the old favourite of claiming that only Chinese are “True Asians”, and that the rest don’t put sugar in their porridge. Errr, I mean the rest are transitional groups between “True Asians” and other races. Considering that those others, and people indistinguishable from them, occupy land that makes up ~75% of the continent, such a claim is amusing to say the least. Any scheme that fails to map onto 3/4 of the designated area is hardly reconcilable to the “geographically distinct” group" that Chen claims that these races are.
How have I misinterpreted Risch?
Indeed, it is a matter of categorisation - see my comment regarding lumpers vs splitters. What is ridiculous, in my opinion, is denying that the concept of race as applied in other species can’t be applied to humans. As though humans don’t show similar patterns of variation linked to geographic ancestry (eg. oceans, mountains, deserts separating various groups over time).
Am I the only one who finds this amusing? 
And nobody has ever said otherwise. So this is a blatant strawman. You are attacking a position that nobody in the world holds.
:rolleyes:
3 pages and 4 days after pages after he bow out conceding that race is objectively verifiable at within the standard scientific 95% level, he reintroduces this shit.
Seriously RR?
Dragged it out of my ass?
If you are you so ignorant of science that you think I pulled the 95% confidence limit out my ass, then you really have no place discussing this issue.
Yes, 0.018%
So once gain, we are back to this. What is your point in introducing this 1-in-5000 anomaly? Do you think there is some sort of gotcha here, or what? You keep referring to this 0.018% error, but you never actually go anywhere with it. It’s almost as though you believe that the fact that there is a 0.018% error is a conclusion in itself, while the rest of us are mystified as to that the relevance of a 0.018% error is.
Nobody disputes that there is a 0.018% error in the objective measurement system that we use to separate male form female. So what? Are you claiming thatmakes the objective measurement system subjective or what?
Because frankly I still have no idea what fucking pint you are trying to make and I doubt that anyone else does either.